Worst serial killers in history

Instead, psychologists have to rely on research, studies, and interviews with convicted serial killers to try to connect the dots — some of the dots, anyway — to see what they can learn about why serial killers develop. There are plenty of terrifying serial killers that have stolen newspaper headlines over the years, and some of them have been studied by psychologists seeking answers about the causality of serial killing.

What psychologists have learned from their studies can perhaps be boiled down to one horrible truth — under the right conditions, anyone can become a serial killer.

They are some of the most horrifying individuals to ever walk the earth. Bundy is easily one of the most deranged serial killers not to mention kidnappers, rapists, burglars, and necrophiles of all time. His modus operandi included kidnapping his female victims, raping them, and then dismembering them. He often kept their heads as souvenirs.

Before he was executed in , Bundy admitted to kidnapping and murdering 30 women, though this number is almost certainly much higher. In reality, the number of people he murdered is likely much higher. As a practicing physician, Shipman had easy access to potential victims, which is why he was able to be such a prolific killer without raising suspicion.

However, because Shipman was involved in so many cases in which patients died, people eventually began to suspect foul play. Most of his victims were elderly women, whom he said had died in their sleep.

But many of these women died during the day, which struck some as odd. Additionally, Shipman asked for an unusually large number of cremation certificates, which caught the attention of an undertaker who reported the odd circumstances of the cremations.

He died by suicide in prison in Between and , the Russian serial killer Andrei Chikatilo sexually assaulted, murdered, and mutilated more than 50 young women and children. Chikatilo killed his victims by stabbing and slashing them with a knife. One of the youngest was nine years old.

Chikatilo later admitted that he was only able to achieve orgasm by stabbing women, a fact which made it difficult for him to resist his strong urges to kill. No list of the most deranged serial killers would be complete without Jeffrey Dahmer. Dahmer, known as the Milwaukee Cannibal, was ultimately convicted of murdering 17 young men over a 14 year period.

He also raped, dismembered, and sometimes even ate his victims. Although Dahmer likely would have been executed for his crimes, he was beaten to death in prison in Fish was tried and found guilty of raping, killing, and cannibalizing three children in the early s.

Especially deranged is the fact that Fish sent a letter to the mother of one of his victims, year old Grace Budd. The letter detailed how he had lured the little girl, strangled her, and then cut her into pieces to eat over the course of nine days.

Gacy was convicted of raping, torturing, and murdering 33 teenage boys over a six-year period. He would lure them to his home, kill them via either strangulation or asphyxiation, then bury them on his property. Gacy was executed in Jack the Ripper may be a name that everyone knows, but no one can be certain of his true identity. Whoever he or she really was, Jack the Ripper was definitely deranged.

In , Jack the Ripper terrorized the Whitechapel neighborhood of London by slitting the throats and abdomens of at least five prostitutes and leaving them for dead. German serial killer Joachim Kroll murdered at least 14 people, including young children, between and Gein was diagnosed with schizophrenia and declared unfit for trial. A decade later, he was convicted of one of the murders, but was declared insane at the time of the crime.

He spent the rest of his life in a mental hospital. John Wayne Gacy was charged with committing 33 murders.

Gacy was later executed by lethal injection. There they found a class ring and clothing belonging to several young men previously reported missing. In a 4-foot crawl space beneath the house, where a penetrating odor was present, they were shocked to find the decomposing bodies of 29 boys and teenagers that Gacy had raped and murdered. Law enforcement also came under criticism, as the family members of several of the victims had previously pointed to Gacy as a possible suspect.

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.

By the way, Buono died of a heart attack in Be that as it may, from , when Lucas murdered his mother , to , he and sometimes accomplice Ottis Toole began murdering people just for the thrill of it. I cannot go on doing this. I also killed the only girl I ever loved. Gacy even considered running for major in Waterloo, Iowa, where he ran in a string of KFC franchises.

Then rumors began circulating of his unusual sexual tastes, such as wife-swapping, prostitution and having sex with teenage boys.

Eventually, Gacy began abducting young men with whom he had sex, and then tortured and murdered. In need of a place to dump the corpses, Gacy simply buried them under and around his house. Finally arrested in , Gacy confessed to murdering 33 young men.

Finally, in May Gacy was executed by lethal injection. Bundy was good looking, well-dressed, charming, and witty. He definitely had what it took to attract women, and this he did to the demise of 40 or more young women in the s, many of them raped, battered and strangled.

At times, Bundy impersonated a police officer so he could more easily snatch and handcuff his victims. Other serial killers have used the same ploy. Once apprehended in , Bundy escaped jail twice and murdered more women until they nabbed him again. Donald Henry Gaskins was dubbed the redneck Charles Manson, because of his short stature, his exalted sense of self-importance, and because he was locked up often at a young age. First incarcerated at 13 in , Gaskins was raped repeatedly, assaults which almost certainly damaged his psyche.

By , Gaskins was a raging psychopath, killing 80 men and women, though he could have killed scores more. Incidentally, along the way, Gaskins also raped and murdered his niece. Through my own power I come to my own redemption. Donald Harvey did not come from the dysfunctional family background typical of most serial killers.

Showing a particularly twisted side, Harvey infected some patients with serious diseases and then nursed them back to health. Ridgway began his murderous ways in , strangling a year-old woman. All of his victims were young women and many of them prostitutes. Ridgway confessed to 48 killings but the total could have been as high as Aileen Wuornos is the lone woman on this list, though there have been a fair number of female serial killers in American history.

Coming from another broken family, Wuornos got pregnant by the age of 15 and soon became a wandering prostitute, hitch-hiking from state to state. From a young age Wuornos developed an obsessive hatred of men and, in a fashion, eventually killed like a man, cutting a swath of terror through Florida with her blazing. Apprehended in early , Wuornos confessed to six homicides, all of them men, though she claimed she had killed them all in self-defense.