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Erzebet Bathory (Hungary) (600 killed)
Known as the most prolific female murderer, it was said that she enjoyed torturing and killing young girls. At first they were servants at her castles, but later they included girls sent to her by local gentry families to learn good manners. She believed that drinking the blood of young girls would preserve her youthfulness and her looks. Witnesses told of her stabbing victims or cutting them with scissors, sticking needles into their lips or burning them with red-hot irons, coins or keys. -
H.H. Holmes (U.S.)
H.H. Holmes, byname of Herman Mudgett, (1893), American swindler and confidence trickster who is widely considered the U.S.'s first known serial killer. In 1886 Mudgett took a job as a pharmacist under the name “Dr. H.H. Holmes.” The house he built for himself, which would become known as “Murder Castle,” was equipped with secret passages, trapdoors, soundproof rooms, doors that could be locked from the outside, gas jets to asphyxiate victims, and a kiln to cremate the bodies. (27 murders) -
Bruno Ludke (Germany)
Bruno Lüdke, German serial killer who may have murdered more than 80 people. Although he is commonly regarded as continental Europe’s deadliest serial killer, some criminologists have questioned the scale of his activity, maintaining that many of his confessions were coerced by police. Lüdke was a drifter and a petty thief with powerful sadistic urges. His murders, which often involved sexual crimes, began in 1928 and continued for 15 years. He killed at least 80 people, mostly women. -
Marcel Petiot (France) (Killed possibly over 63)
In 1933 he moved to Paris, and enjoyed a good reputation as a doctor and continued to commit various crimes. During World War II Petiot concocted a scheme to increase his wealth at the expense of Jews wishing to escape from Nazi-occupied France. Offering them help, Petiot injected them with poison, which he told them was medicine to protect them from disease; after watching his victims die, he plundered their cash and placed their bodies in a basement furnace in his specially soundproofed home. -
Delfina and Maria de Jesus Gonzales (Mexico)
Two sisters from the Mexican state of Guanajuato, from the 1950s until the mid-1960s, ran a brothel. Police officers searched the sisters' property and found the bodies of 11 men, 80 women and several fetuses, a total of over 91. They'd recruit prostitutes through help-wanted ads; though the ads would state the girls would become maids for the two sisters. The sisters killed the prostitutes when they became too ill, damaged from sexual abuse, lost their looks or stopped pleasing the customers. -
Donald Henry Gaskins (U.S)
Although not proven, he claimed to have killed 181 persons. He was executed for his crimes, which terrorized South Carolina between 1969 and 1975. Born to an unwed mother, he grew up with the nickname "Pee Wee" due to his small size. He divided his slayings into what he called two groups: coastal kills (raping and killing for the sadistic pleasure of it), and serious kills (personal acquaintances). By November 1970, he had 10 sadistic kills and one serious kill, including his own niece. -
Pedro Lopez (Colombia)
Known as the "Monster of the Andes,” he is believed to have murdered more than 300 people. Lopez started to seek out young girls, usually of indigenous background and limited economic means. He would lure his victims to remote areas, committing rape and murder, later reporting that he murdered dozens during the mid-to-late 1970s. Lopez was caught by the Ayachucos community when he attempted to kidnap a nine-year-old, with the group submitting him to tribal law and attempting to bury him alive. -
John Wayne Gacy (U.S)
John Wayne Gacy was an American serial killer and rapist who took the lives of at least 33 young males in Cook County, Illinois, burying most under his house. Other bodies were recovered from the nearby Des Plaines River. Sometimes known as the “Killer Clown" for his habit of dressing in a clown costume and makeup, Gacy had an abusive childhood and struggled with his homosexuality. After being convicted of sexual assault in 1968, Gacy's murders were discovered. -
Ted Bundy (36 killed confirmed, possibly over 100) (U.S.)
Ted Bundy was a 1970s serial murderer, rapist and necrophiliac. He was executed in Florida's electric chair in 1989. His case has since inspired many novels and films about serial killers. His killings usually followed a gruesome pattern: He often raped his victims before beating them to death. Many women in the Seattle area and in nearby Oregon went missing. He lured his victims into his car by pretending to be injured and asking for their help. Their kindness proved to be a fatal mistake. -
Andrei Romanovich Chikatilo (Russia)
Andrei Romanovich Chikatilo was a Soviet serial killer, nicknamed the Butcher of Rostov, the Red Ripper, and the Rostov Ripper, who sexually assaulted, murdered, and mutilated at least 52 women and children between 1978 and 1990 in the Russian SFSR, the Ukrainian SSR, and the Uzbek SSR. Efforts by Soviet police to issue warnings to the public during their investigation were hampered by the country’s official ideology, which asserted that serial murder was impossible in a communist society. -
Jeffrey Dahmer (17 killed, U.S.)
Jeffrey Dahmer was an American serial killer who took the lives of 17 males between 1978 and 1991. Dahmer sought out men, lured them home with promises of money or sex, and gave them alcohol laced with drugs before strangling them to death. He would then engage in sex acts with the corpses before dismembering them and disposing of them, often keeping their skulls or genitals as souvenirs. He frequently took photos of his victims at various stages of the murder process. -
Harold Shipman (UK)
He was a British doctor and serial killer who murdered at least 215 of his patients by injecting high doses of painkillers. It raised troubling questions about the powers and responsibilities of the medical community in Britain and about the adequacy of procedures for certifying sudden death. A local noticed that Dr. Shipman's patients seemed to be dying at an unusually high rate, and exhibited similar poses in death: most were fully clothed, and usually sitting up or reclining on a settee. -
Donald Harvey (U.S.)
Donald Harvey was an unassuming nurse’s aid in 1987 when he pleaded guilty to killing 37 people. The soft-looking man had been on a decades-long rampage of poisoning hospital patients driven by some God complex. He saw himself as an “Angel of Death” who meted out mercy killings to the terminally ill.
In reality, he was an undiscerning killer who used a lethal cocktail of arsenic and cyanide on the helpless. -
Anatoly Yuriyovych Onoprienko (Ukraine)
Anatoly Yuriyovych Onoprienko is a Soviet serial killer. After police arrested him, Onoprienko confessed to killing 52 people. The killings followed a set pattern. He chose an isolated house, gained the attention of the occupants by creating a commotion. He would then kill all occupants starting with the adult male, before going to find and kill the spouse and finally the children. He would then usually set the buildings alight in an attempt to cover his tracks. He would also kill any witnesses. -
Luis Alfredo Garavito (Colombia)
Officially, he murdered somewhere between 138 and 192 young boys, but it is possible that he killed 300-400. Despite the horrific nature of his crimes, the Colombian justice system’s maximum penalty of 30 years led to the possibility that Garavito could be released. Garavito began his grotesque murder spree sometime in 1992. He was extremely careful in terms of who he picked as a victim. Practically all of his victims were boys aged 6-16 who were orphaned, peasants or homeless. -
Hu Wanlin (China)
Hu Wanlin is thought to be one of the world's most prolific medical serial killers. He was arrested for killing 146 people, but suspected of the deaths of more. Hu's 'treatments' were thought to have resulted in the death of at least 146 people. The 'treatments' involved herbal preparations which were proved to contain high amounts of sodium sulphate which is poisonous in large doses. He also employed the traditional practice of qigong, in which the healer emits qi from his body. -
Javed Iqbal (Pakistan)
He was a Pakistani serial killer who murdered some 100 boys. According to his confession, he had lured the boys, mostly beggars and street children between the ages of 6 and 16, to his home in Lahore, where he sexually assaulted them, strangled them to death, dismembered their bodies, and disposed of the pieces in a vat of acid. Iqbal claimed that his crimes were undertaken as an act of revenge against the police, who, he said, had assaulted him following an arrest.
