Murders and serial killings are really very sad and scary news that can come up on the daily news. These men have shaken the firm trust and love that forms the backbone of humanity. Their actions are a blot in society and have caused great grief and pain to others.
These serial killers often use inhumane and devious ways to commit gruesome murders. In this article we will be listing some of the world’s most famous serial killers and their stories.
The worst part is that many do not even feel that their actions are wrong and even wish to justify them. More often than not, their activities are carried out for no apparent reason and their logic has no shred of justification.
10 Famous Serial Killers with Shocking Stories
1. Ahmad Suradji: Datuk Maringgi
Ahmad Suradji is an Indonesian cattle breeder who has confessed to 42 murders. His victims were mainly girls and young women, whom he used to kill and bury waist-deep in his sugarcane field.
He believed this ritual of burying bodies facing his house would make him a compelling person. He was sentenced to death and his execution was carried out by the firing squad.
2. Jack The Ripper
With over a hundred victims, Jack the Ripper used to haunt the city streets of London in the late 1880s. The victims, who were primarily sex workers, had their throats slit and bodies sadistically mutilated with a carving knife. The killer allegedly sent several letters to the London Metropolitan Police, which taunted officers about the gruesome acts.
Even after several manhunts and investigations, the case remained unsolved. The case was closed in 1892 due to inconclusive evidence. Many theories suggest that the killer could be a butcher or a surgeon since he seemed to have great knowledge of human anatomy.
Jack The Ripper is among the famous serial killer nicknames.
3. Tsutomu Miyazaki: The Otaku Murderer
Tsutomu Miyazaki committed several hideous acts of crime including abduction, murder, and even necrophilia on little girls. One of his many hideous acts includes drinking the victim’s blood and eating her hand after killing her. He often preserved his victims’ body parts as his trophies, gaining the name ‘Human Dracula’.
After his grandfather died in 1988, Tsutomu Miyazaki got depressed, which fueled his atrocious acts. He even sent postcards to his victim’s families describing his gruesome actions and taunting them. Miyazaki was arrested in July 1989 for the murder of 4 young girls and sentenced to death in 1997.
4. Ted Bundy
Ted Bundy was a handsome, well-educated, and charming man who used his wiles to rape and murder several young women. He was the first serial killer whose trial was streamed on television. Ted Bundy often revisited his crime scenes to indulge in sexual acts with his victims’ corpses. Bundy had decapitated some of his victims – a search of his apartment showed 12 such heads kept as trophies.
He enjoyed his status as a media star and welcomed journalists, and received several letters of admiration, hoping to delay his execution. However, it did not work, and he was executed in 1989 by electrocution.
Though he had confessed to committing 30 murders, the total number of his victims is unknown. Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes is one of the most famous serial killer documentaries.
5. Jeffrey Dahmer: Milwaukee Cannibal
Jeffrey Dahmer committed his first murder in 1978, at the ripe age of 18. He committed several acts of murder between this time and 1991 when he was arrested for his crime. Dahmer also indulged in acts of necrophilia as well as cooking and consumption of his victim’s body parts. He was caught after a prospective victim overpowered him and reported him to the authorities. His victims were mainly young men of colored skin.
During his sensational trial, he gave a gruesome description of cannibalism and necrophilia, which renewed interest in serial killers among the masses. Dahmer was sentenced to 927 years of imprisonment in 1992 but was killed by a fellow inmate in 1994. He makes it to the top 10 serial killers list.
6. John Wayne Gacy: The Killer Clown
The friendly neighbor turned serial killer and a sex offender is something no one expected from John Wayne Gacy. Between 1972 and 1978, he assaulted and murdered around 33 teenagers and young men. He would tempt young boys to his house promising them work or money, only to strangulate them with a tourniquet.
He would hide his victim’s corpses in the crawl space under his house and later dispose of them in the Des Plaines River. John often used to perform as a clown in fundraising events – hence the name ‘Killer Clown’. He was arrested and sentenced to death for committing 33 murders. After 14 years on death row, he was executed by lethal injection in 1994.
7. Luis Garavito: La Bestia
Luis Garavito is Columbia’s worst serial killer with over 300 victims. His modus operandi was tempting poor boys between the age of 6 to 16 with money, candy, or odd jobs, only to end up torturing, raping, and killing them. Though he has admitted to 138 acts of crime, the total number of his victims is more than twice that number. According to the Guinness Book of World Records, he has more murder victims than the world’s worst serial killer, Pedro López.
On 22 April 1999, Garavito was arrested on separate charges of attempted rape, but his confession was not enough to charge him with his murders. After conclusive evidence was found at different crime scenes, Garavito was sentenced to several terms in prison, which total of 1,853 years and nine days in jail. He is one of the worst serial killers of all time.
8. Harold Shipman – Dr. Death
Harold Shipman is one of history’s deadliest serial killers who has committed as many as 218 credited murders while working as a popular British physician. He began his murder spree in 1972 and killed over 70 people in his first practice. The number of victims almost doubled at the second practice; his victims were mainly elderly women. Since the initial investigations were handled shoddily, Shipnam proceeded with three more murders.
His last victim gave him away as her autopsy revealed high levels of diamorphine. He was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment without parole in 2000. He never confessed to any of his misdeeds and committed suicide in his prison cell.
9. Alexander Pichushkin: The Bitsa Park Maniac
Alexander Pichushkin often called the ‘Chessboard Killer’ or the ‘Bitsa Park Maniac’, used to target homeless men and murder them. He lured them into his home with vodka and killed them with blunt weapons. Most of his victims had signs of repeated hammer blows to the back of their heads and empty vodka bottles were inserted into the gaping skull wounds.
He aimed to complete 64 murders – the exact number of squares on a chessboard. However, he was caught and is currently serving life imprisonment for the crime of killing at least 49 people.
10. Richard Ramirez: Night Stalker
Richard Ramirez or the Night Stalker was a prolific American serial killer with 15 murder victims and several cases of torture. After having developed epilepsy since childhood, he became a heavy drug user and started believing in Satanism, which was an impetus for his crime.
Initially, he started with home invasion and theft, but it soon turned to violence. His first murder victim was an old lady, whom he had sexually assaulted, stabbed, and killed during a burglary in her place. His spree of home invasion and murder terrorized the residents of Greater Los Angeles, and later San Francisco Bay Area.
The judge who sentenced him commented that his actions showed “cruelty, callousness, and viciousness beyond any human understanding”. Not having reflected on his crimes, Richard Ramirez passed away from B-cell lymphoma while awaiting his execution.