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I was a peace officer/Paramedic at San Quentin on Condemned row. We had 415 on my last day there I knew them all. The serial killers were extremely interesting. I had to walk the tiers, deliver medications, escort the inmates to and from medical and dental appointments and of course respond to all assaults, medical emergencies, shootings and stabbings (so many shootings and stabbings). HenryRN
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I was an appellate public defender in Kansas City and we shared offices with the death penalty unit. So my interactions with a few famous killers is in talking to their attorneys and paralegals and listening to their "demands." As a death penalty client you have a huge team working your case (the goal is avoiding the death penalty, not necessarily avoiding conviction).
They are accustomed to getting what they want IRL, so it is a major wake up call once incarcerated. And many of these people are older. They hate the beds, they can't have their dentures, they don't get their preferred whatever. These are not people who adjust well to prison. msscahlett
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I had a regular customer at my shop who would come in and buy cigarettes and beer after his shift. He was friendly and polite enough, helped us to catch a shop lifter on one occasion, however did like to stare a little too much at one of my colleagues.
Then a young woman goes missing in my town. It was all over the news as it was completely out of character for her. There was ribbons scattered in trees and lamp posts all over. One day they pull a body out of the river and it was identified as this young woman. Her family was devastated.
A few days later they announced the name of a man they wanted to speak to who had been spotted in a local shop buying cigarettes and beer and later on CCTV trying to talk to her in a park, however he hung himself and was found dead in a local park a few days later.
It was the customer. The Shop footage they showed was from my shop. The cashier had been blurred so we have no way of knowing who served him that time but it gives me the creeps just thinking about it. Glitch_in_the_pink
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Back in the 40's my grandparents were on vacation down in Florida. One day they were at a cafe and a man approached them recognizing their Chicago accents and asked if he could eat with them being a Chicago native himself. They had a great time chatting and ended up talking for an hour or two.
When they were departing they realized proper introductions had never been done and promptly introduced themselves. The response "Al Capone it's been great talking with you two"
Not exactly a serial killer but certainly responsible for many deaths and too good of a story to pass up. LittleOrangeBoi
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Back in the 40's my grandparents were on vacation down in Florida. One day they were at a cafe and a man approached them recognizing their Chicago accents and asked if he could eat with them being a Chicago native himself. They had a great time chatting and ended up talking for an hour or two. When they were departing they realized proper introductions had never been done and promptly introduced themselves. The response "Al Capone it's been great talking with you two"
Not exactly a serial killer but certainly responsible for many deaths and too good of a story to pass up. LittleOrangeBoi
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I grew up next to a family whose eldest daughter dated the brother of Luke Ferguson, (terrible link, sorry) who wasn't a serial killer but was a murderer and a psychopath. He's since killed an inmate since being in jail for his original murder.
There was a big empty lot on our street where everyone in the neighborhood would play baseball and we always hated it when Luke would come. Guy was such a mess, always whining and trying to bully every one else. My buddy Patrick took two beaners from him one day when he was pitching and after the second one charged him with the baseball bat. Luke stopped coming around after that.
Some years later we see him on the news sitting on a damn John Deere tractor being interviewed about his neighbor's murder, saying "Oh it's a horrible tragedy"... only to find out two days later he was the one who did it. None of us were shocked. Patrick texted me that night and said "I should have ran his fat butt down and launched his skull across the street." ickyspinface
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Not a serial killer, but still a pretty well known murder. My ex boyfriend's older sister was very close with another girl when they were 14-16. They spent a ton of time together and she was always over at their house. Well, that girl ended up murdering her nine year old neighbor and burying her in a shallow grave in the woods. She wrote in her diary that she did it because she wanted to know what it was like to kill someone. She was caught soon after and is still in prison.
Everyone was shocked when it all came out. It messed up both my ex and his older sister pretty bad, and my ex thinks that she at least considered killing him because he was a similar age to the victim and she had plenty of access to him. retromortem
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Not me but my aunt was one of the only ones who wasn't killed when Ted Bundy went to that sorority in Florida because that night her friend asked her to sleep over. She still has never talked about it and I only found out she was in that sorority from a project I did in Psychology and asked my mom about it since I grew up in Tallahassee where it happened. Very wild and still gives me goosebumps, so I can't even imagine how my aunt feels, especially these past couple of years when all these shows and movies came out about him. StarfishBlubBlub
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An old employee of mine dated the Phoenix canal killer for a couple years and didn't find out about him till she saw his face on the news. They were no longer together at this point. She came into work the next morning and told me they had arrested him on suspicion of being the killer. The FBI interviewed her and everything. He was eventually found guilty of I think at least 3 murders. She was pretty freaked out about it. xByeByeBlackbirdx
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This person only killed one person. But he was very quiet at work, we being a gregarious group were always trying to get him to talk. One weekend he went home and killed our CEO's at the time daughter; practically beheading her; and left her infant son in the bed with her body. Saw it on the news afterwards and "jaw on the floor" is a complete understatement. Hellaintsobad
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My dad met Charlie Manson at a motorcycle shop (if I remember right) in Venice Beach in the 60s. Said he remembered a really short (my dad's a foot taller) creepy dude with scary eyes. Didn't think anything of it until he turned up on the news. human-foie-gras
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When I was 7, a man knocked on our door at about 8:30 at night. My mom and I were in the living room watching TV. My mom answered the door, and he said something about selling newspapers. She said she wasn't interested, and as she tried to close the door he tried to force his way inside.
She always had the chain latch on and she kicked the door closed on his arm as he tried to grab for her. He ran away and she called the police. About a year later Cleophus Prince Jr was arrested for killing 6 women, mostly in our neighborhood. My mom recognized him as the man who tried to force his way in that night. zoupishness7
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My grandmother was a neighbor to John Wayne Gacy for a brief time.
My mother used to talk about a photo they had with him completely unaware of what was going on. Of course after his conviction they were floored.
So I just got off the phone with my mother. She said yeah we were his neighbors and my grandmother said he was a nice man it seemed. They have pictures of him in his driveway as well. Mom is gonna try and find them. Also, my grandmother rode the bus to work with Richard Speck apparently. Lol This was confirmed as well by my aunt. I bet it was bone chilling when they started hauling bodies out of the driveway. welldamnbrother
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I went to the same church as BTK. He was always very nice, polite, and helpful. I remember how shocked my family was when he was arrested. He had such a firm handshake. I've met so many people in the Park City area who've had a creepy encounter with him.
My friend's aunt was one of the women who got away. She heard the window break in the living room and saw a hand reaching through to unlock the door. She ran away and then moved out of Kansas permanently. Tyle-Walburn
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My aunt was a judicial assistant in Florida back in the 1980's. One day, three well dress men came to see the judge. One was particularly good looking and charming and really chatted her up. She found out later that she had been chatted up by Ted Bundy. prairiediva
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I have met two while sitting in jail in lock down protected custody. One was a convicted axe murderer who was waiting on a re-trail as the evidence and testimony against him was in question. He was a decent guy as long as you didn't piss him off by changing the channel when football was on or do anything stupid like singing or kicking the doors at night.
He even cut my hair for me when we got the clippers. I remember he had project innocence lawyers so he might not actually be one who knows. His name was Sherwood Brown
The second one was just crazy he threw all his discovery papers out of the bean hole of his cell and they included pictures of his victims.
He would try to sell dried deodorant from the state issue as "drugs" and was supposedly willing to tell people where he buried the bodies to snitch on him but it sounded like a con and I avoided talking to him out on rec. From what I remember he was sitting in jail for a murder in Mississippi and was just waiting on a transfer. I don't remember his name as I avoided talking to him. lividust
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When I was 13, I was living on the streets of Lake Elsinore California and had a lady looking after me that was a druggie. She had a John that really liked her and invited us to his place once. He was a real weird bastard. A year later she turned up dead with a whole bunch of other working girls in the area killed by the I-15 strangler.
When they caught the guy I instantly recognized him as the John. His name was William Lester Suff and the Trailer that he took us to was his Kill Shack. 😳 Red_Dog75
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A friend of mine worked with Ted Bundy at the time when the police were reporting a man named Ted with a VW bug was committing the crime. The office workers joked with him that he was the murderer. My friend relates that he joked along with it saying something like "Oh, you got me. I'm the guy. Ha ha." cartoonassasin
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Elizabeth Whetlaufer. Was my dad's nurse. She disappeared, saw her on the news about three months later led away in handcuffs for killing several seniors over a period of years.
Reaction: "Holy Crap!" then checking dates of when she was still working, and my dad's date of death (about a month later). Exchanges with her never raised any red flags, just typical visitor/nurse talk. Axle13
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Not me, but my best buddy's older brother lived off the grid in northern Yukon in the 70's. Comes home to Edmonton once every couple of years. Due to terrible gravel and dirt roads back then it is a 4 day drive. Starting his journey one time he picks up a hitchhiker, it's the code of the North, people help each other. They hit it off and the hitcher even helps out with the driving duties.
One time when the hitcher was sleeping, my buddy's brother hears on the radio a police alert about a multiple murderer in the area, he matches the description of the hitcher. As they are still in the middle of nowhere he turns off the radio and he ends up staying with the guy for 2 more days.
When they finally got into a populated area they stopped at a diner and he called the cops. Provincial cops did a traffic stop 30 minutes later and got the guy.
He had killed his wife, kid and her parents. LOUDCO-HD
Do you have something to confess to George? Text "Secrets" or "
" to +1 (310) 299-9390 to talk to him about it.
That's one way to do it.
The Weepy Voiced Killer. He killed young women, then called the cops and reported it himself. He even called police once they reported on it that they got the facts wrong.
God his calls were so unnerving. It was like listening to someone trying to force themselves to feel any remorse.
That's unnerving.
GiphyDennis Rader (BTK) was a family friend. Went to my Nana's church and did cub scout crap with my uncles. When he was caught one of my uncles was freaking out because "he taught me the knots he used".
- He had a camera roll full of pictures of him tied up, posing in the lingerie of women he killed.
- He used his jobs as an alarm tech and a city code enforcer to gain access to people's homes.
- If you want/wanted to write him in prison, you had to fill out an application. The dude is a convicted serial killer and makes you think you have to try and earn the right to write him.
The scariest ones of all.
Those who haven't been caught yet.
Of those, the sexual sadists scare me the most. The others you may have a fighting chance with. If you can convince them of your humanity, or otherwise break that sort of trance, there's a slim but real chance.
But not to a sexual sadist. As one forensic psychologist described it, imagine the tissue you used to blow your nose this morning. Did you think of it at all after throwing it out? That's exactly how sexual sadists treat people.
One of the most gruesome.
Tool box killers. The story is gruesome even the transcripts make my stomach turn.
Came here to to say this. Learning about these guys satiated my curiosity for the macabre. I have multiple family members in the FBI and they helped with research for my writing. I listened to part of the tape and read the transcript of the murder. I can't emphasize this enough, this is the absolute depth of human depravity. I don't want to go into detail, but your description of what these guys did to their victims is pg-13 compared to the reality of the viciousness of these murders.
Seriously, once I came across this stuff I stopped exploring this part of humanity.
I grew up learning about serial killers. I thought they were fascinating. Finally I found the true gruesome play by play description of these murders and just stopped and never looked back.
Seriously, when you hear someone scream the way their victim screamed on the recording the distinction between fictional murders and real murders becomes painfully apparent. Horror movies were my favorite genre growing up, specifically slasher films. Now I avoid movies like that. The crap you see in horror movies is nothing compared to what real life serial killers have done.
I can't exaggerate this. I've literally made a commitment to never tell anyone the details of what I've heard and seen.
The toybox killer and Albert Fish are two close runner ups. Fish was another sadomasochist with a passion for genital mutilation, for both himself and his victims. Toybox killer is a repulsive case study into the perversions of a group of a people.
But seriously, the toolbox murders are sick. From what I understand one of the investigators killed himself and named the killers in his suicide note as a reason.
This case is the best example for the idea that evil triumphs over good because good men rarely understand how truly wicked evil men can be. If someone put a gun to my head and told me to do what they did I would tell them to pull the trigger.
The Vampire of Sacramento.
GiphyI'm gonna go with cannibal and necrophile Richard Chase, the "Vampire of Sacramento". He's a super, super creepy dude, but also a little bit sad, in that he was obviously mentally cracked right from his youth and yet he was just kind of ignored and left to fend for himself. A few choice passages from his Wikipedia bio:
- "Once alone in the apartment, Chase began to capture, kill, and disembowel various animals, which he would then devour raw, sometimes mixing the raw organs with Coca-Cola in a blender and drinking the concoction. Chase believed that by ingesting the creatures he was preventing his heart from shrinking."
- "Later investigation uncovered that, in mid-1977, Chase was stopped and arrested on a reservation in the Pyramid Lake (Nevada), area. His body was smeared with blood and a bucket of blood was found in his truck. The blood was determined to be cow's blood, and no charges were filed."
- "He attempted to enter the home of a woman two weeks later, but because her doors were locked, he walked away. Chase later told detectives that he took locked doors as a sign that he was not welcome, but unlocked doors were an invitation to come inside. He was once caught and chased off by a couple returning home as he pilfered their belongings; he had also urinated and defecated on their infant child's bed and clothing."
- "Chase was arrested shortly afterwards - police who searched Chase's apartment found that the walls, floor, ceiling, refrigerator, and all of Chase's eating and drinking utensils were soaked in blood."
- "His fellow inmates, aware of the extremely violent nature of Chase's crimes, feared him, and according to prison officials, often tried to persuade Chase to commit suicide."
That's what's scary about them.
Ed Kemper, honestly he seems like the type of guy you'd strike up a convo with at the grocery store or some sh*t. He seems so sane when he talks if you don't think about what he really did. Very calm sounding. He's also 6'9 which is horrifying.
A spooky one.
H.H. Holmes and his Murder Castle. He had it built/modified with soundproofed rooms, secret doorways, hidden passages, airtight gas chambers, and chutes directly to the basement where he would send his dead bodies, dissect them, then sell the organs on the black market, sell the skeletons to medical labs and schools, and dissolve everything else in vats of lye/acid, or burn it all in the basement's crematorium.
He got away with a lot more than just murder. His entire life was just one criminal enterprise after another that he'd constantly get away with.
Mind-boggling, indeed.
GiphyJoseph James DeAngelo (Golden State Killer/East Area Rapist/Original Night Stalker). Just mind-boggling how much misery he inflicted and how he got away with it for so long.
What maybe creeps me out the most about that guy is how he just stopped one day. Like, you think about serial killers, and you imagine that they're just crazy, or it's this intense compulsion that makes them do it. But this guy just stopped one day. Meaning, he could have stopped whenever, but made a decision to keep doing it. That really spooks me out.
One of the craziest cases.
Ted Bundy. Only because during his trials, even with all the evidence stacked against him, people (especially women) trusted him. Mostly because he "didn't look like someone who would kill". Meaning he was attractive to the female populace.
That's disturbing.
Robert "Willy" Pickton. From what I know, arguably Canada's most notorious and twisted serial killer.
Killed between 50 and 90 women and fed their remains to pigs, at his farm. If I recall correctly, he got convicted of 49 murders.
Creepy is an understatement.
GiphyCharlie Brandt
Killed his mother and tried to kill his father and sister as a teenager. Once out of juvie he went on to live a normal(?) life, got married and all that. At age 47, he butchered his wife and niece before killing himself. While investigating this it came to light he may have been connected to 26 unsolved murders in Florida.
Crime Junkie has a really good podcast episode on him.
One of the worst.
Ted Bundy, I live in Utah and people are very friendly and kind of naive sometimes. It's unnerving that someone like him could become part of the Utah/Mormon culture just to have access to young girls.
Also, he doesn't look creepy he looks really normal and was studying to be a lawyer. If I met him irl I probably never would suspect his evil motives. That kind of serial killer is really scary to me, the kind that blends right in.
How horrifying.
The Night Stalker. Would break into places and wait for so long to spring on his victims, and then he would tie them up and blindfold them and they would never be able to tell if he actually left or was waiting for them to move so he could kill them. I think about that sometimes at night and I find it terrifying.
My biggest fear.
GiphyI often think about this question. The Toy Box killer was already mentioned, and I agree that his torture methods are the worst. I would like to add Richard Chase, AKA " The Vampire of Sacramento", and Richard Ramirez, AKA "The Night Stalker".
Chase was severely mentally ill and unmedicated, and had a fixation on blood. Ramirez's upbringing is upsetting in itself, but someone breaking into my house and brutally murdering my family would be one of the most violating ways to go.
Kevorkian types.
Harold Shipman or any of those "angel of death" type killers. Insulin poison type killers I have no respect for. People like Kevorkian types the movie on him played by Al Pacino scared me and made me cry.
The fascination with serial killers is one that is common in many pop culture junkies. A number of podcasts, books, and films have been written with this in mind, to which countless people have devoured.
Some of the facts of these killers will fascinate you, others might have you closing this tab and running to watch some sort of palate cleanser (like cat videos!). Read on, if you dare.
zimmy9921 asked: What are some serial killer facts/facts about serial killers that you find extremely interesting?
This guy is always one step ahead.
"The serial killer Bela Kiss liked to pickle people in barrels stored in his basement. Someone figured it out but they couldn't get him because he was fighting in World War I. By the time they tracked him down he had disappeared and left a dead guy in his hospital bed.
He supposedly joined the French Foreign Legion and deserted that too, and I think history loses track of him after that, with the exception of one possible sighting as a janitor in New York. The janitor disappeared before anyone could confirm it."
As if the freeways weren't bad enough.
Giphy
"Mack Ray Edwards, he was a serial killer who worked for CalTrans. He'd kill his victims and then bury the bodies in places he would later help build the highways over.
Not all his victims have been found, and many are very likely still under some of the California highways you may have driven over countless times."
Cheater!
"Dennis Rader, aka BTK (Bind Torture Kill) started communicating with police after years of silence in like 2004ish? He had gone decades without being caught and once again started sending taunting letters and items to them.
He asked them if he could be traced if he sent them his writings on a floppy disc and they assured him through a communication in a newspaper that no, they couldn't trace him. He sent them a floppy disc and they found metadata linking to his church. He was arrested shortly thereafter.
He was hurt that they would lie to him because he thought they had developed a rapport."
Seems a little on-the-nose.
"PeeWee Gaskins, most prolific serial killer in SC drove around in a hearse with a bumper sticker that read "I haul dead people." He told people that he needed it to take the bodies of people he killed to his private cemetery.
He claimed to have killed between 100 and 110 people."
How horrifying.
Giphy
"I am surprised we don't hear more about Robert Hansen in popular culture. He would kidnap women and turn them loose in the Alaskan wilderness, where he would then hunt them down like animals and kill them.
He didn't have the highest number of victims, but his method of hunting them for sport is absolutely insane."
Pretty logical on their part.
"The Hillside Stranglers picked up a young woman to murder. Then they discovered that her father was Peter Lorre, a legendary Hollywood character actor.
They let her go because they feared that killing a celebrity's daughter would bring too much attention down."
Wonder why he disappeared....
"Pedro Alonso Lopez plead guilty to the murders of 100+ girls and only received a maximum sentence of 16 years as that was the maximum possible sentence in Ecuador.
He was released despite promising to continue killing but disappeared shortly after."
Hell no.
"Jeffery Dahmer tried to make "sex zombies" out of some of his victims by drilling holes in their heads while they were alive and pouring acid into the holes.
The twistedness and desperation of such an act is fascinating and truly goes to show how disturbed he was. Makes you wonder too what would have happened if he was successful, like would he stop killing or would he just amass a growing harem of slaves?"
Nope.
Giphy
"There's a network of serial killers currently active that the FBI are trying to track down.
They're truckers that target prostitutes and addicts across the United States and actively help each other by transporting bodies and communicating with each other about what cities have been visited by one other in recent times. FBI.gov has a page dedicated to it."
One of the most famous killers.
"When police eventually came to the house of Ed Gein they found an absolute pigsty. Gein had been living alone since the death of his brother in a barn fire (it's speculated that Gein may have killed him) and had let much of the house go into disrepair. They found countless body parts from his various grave digging excursions, including a bag of wilted vaginas and, of course, the infamous skin lampshade and half-finished woman suit made of human skin. There were maggots living in old dishes in the kitchen. It was the type of disorganized mess that you would expect from a man who spent his nights completely disconnected from reality.
All except one room. His mother's room upstairs remained pristine, except for dust that had collected, and seemingly untouched from the time of her death years earlier. He had such a fear or respect for his mother that he was afraid to set foot in her room long after she had died. He claimed to hear her voice criticizing him from time to time.
This was the central experience that inspired Norman Bates' character to maintain his mother's home/image in Psycho.
Also a fun fact about Gein:
In Taxi Driver, Travis Bickle makes an off-hand comment when leaving a diner that he had a cup of coffee and a slice of apple pie with cheese on top. In exchange for details to investigators after his capture, Gein requested the same meal."