Some criminals are meticulous in their planning. They will stalk a victim and commit their nefarious deeds with a mind to how they will escape authorities and never be tied to the scene of the crime. There have been killers that actually shaved their bodies and wore clean suits ahead of time just so they would leave no evidence that they were involved. But for all the planning that some killers do ahead of time, it’s the stupid mistakes that they make afterwards that often end up being their downfall.
10. Ted Bundy Stole a Car
During Ted Bundy’s reign of terror, the serial killer was responsible for at least 30 murders over a span of about 5 years. It’s very likely that he committed many other crimes that we’ll never know about. Bundy was known to be a charming man, and he was considered handsome as well. These were two traits that helped him gain the confidence of many of his victims. His M.O. was used as a part of the movie The Silence of the Lambs. He would approach his victims during the day, in public places, pretending to be disabled and in need of help. Seeing such a charming but helpless man lulled a lot of people into a false sense of safety. Then he would knock them unconscious and kidnap them before sexually assaulting and murdering them.
The full details of exactly what he did are widely available and also remarkably disturbing and gruesome. He had been a psychology student in University and was well-liked by other students and his professors. He even got into law school in the early 1970s. It seems like the only reason he didn’t finish was that he was too busy committing murders. When authorities turned their eye to Bundy in 1975 after he was charged with assault and kidnapping, he left Colorado in favour of Florida and continued his crime spree.
Bundy was initially caught because he was driving with no lights on in the early morning. When the police inspected his car, it was full of what we consider today to be a host of creepy items including a ski mask, an ice pick, and handcuffs. Unfortunately, all that they charged him with was kidnapping. He managed to escape from prison later, and then was caught again when he made an illegal turn in a stolen vehicle. Once again he managed to escape from prison, and once again he was caught in a stolen car.
Had he not chosen to steal a car for the second and third times he was caught, he might have gotten away with everything for an indefinite time.
9. Golden State Killer Left Old DNA
Tons of people get suckered into the allure of sites like Ancestry.com or 23andMe. Who wouldn’t be excited to find out that they are 11.6% Atlantean, 35.6% Scottish, and 0.4% French Canadian? If you’re a serial killer, however, then these online DNA registries could be your undoing.
Law enforcement use the site called GEDMatch to upload a DNA sample they had from the Golden State Killer left at a crime scene from the 1980s. that site is a free online database where anyone can post their genetic data that they received from a site like 23andMe or Ancestry.com. Most people use it to help find distant relatives they didn’t know about who also uploaded their DNA results. But the police used it to track down anyone who was genetically related to the Golden State killer, a serial killer who had been at large for decades. They ended up finding a few cousins.
Using the other information available to them, law enforcement was able to narrow down who the killer was based on approximate age and the location of the crimes. They subsequently caught and arrested Joseph James DeAngelo Jr. The former police officer had committed 13 murders, 50 rapes, and well over 100 burglaries between 1973 and 1986.
The DNA that the killer has left at the scene was utterly useless to law enforcement before this. While it’s a great way to identify a suspect, you do need to match it to a suspect. Since the police had none, the DNA was like a fingerprint with no finger to match it to. But the killer’s family members had at some point in time had their DNA tested. Had it not been for the novelty of modern DNA testing, the killer might have never been caught.
8. Randy Kraft Drove Drunk
Randy Kraft was known as the Scorecard Killer among other colorful mantis the media gave him for his murder spree that lasted nearly a decade from the early ’70s into the early 1980s. He killed at least 16 young men, but it’s thought that’s the true number may get well over 50.
Kraft got the nickname Scorecard Killer after he was caught, and it was discovered that he had literally kept a kind of scorecard that was written in code referencing various aspects of his victims. Some of them included initials for the victims that he killed while others detailed the various ways he had mutilated their bodies.
Kraft had long been a suspect in the murders and had even been arrested before. Authorities were not able to make any charges stick, as there was little evidence tying him to the murders. In fact, when police did try to charge him with a murder, the Los Angeles District Attorney dismissed the request of the investigating officers because the coroner had concluded the particular victim in this case had died of accidental drowning and not murder. That was in 1975.
It would not be until 1983 after Kraft had murdered several more victims that the California Highway Patrol caught sight of him driving erratically down Interstate 5. After he performed an illegal lane change, the officers pulled him over on suspicion of drunk driving. They discovered that there was actually a dead body in the passenger seat at the time. Police uncovered a mountain of forensic evidence including blood from other victims, numerous Polaroids of victims, and the affirmation scorecard detailing his crimes.
7. Alexander Bychkov Robbed a Store
Russian serial killer Alexander Bychkov was convicted of murdering nine men. His victims were typically older, sometimes homeless men, and Bychkov is known to have cannibalized the victims.
Many of Bychkov’s crimes were committed in the same way. He would meet an older man at a bar who was either homeless or an alcoholic and invite them back to his place after a night of drinking. He would then kill them and dismember their bodies.
Bychkov caught a break in 2010 when police arrested another man for the crimes and managed to get a confession out of him. The man was mentally ill, and it’s believed the confession was coerced.
Two years later, Bychkov robbed a hardware store of several knives and about $300 worth of cash. After he was arrested, police searched his home and found a diary in which he details the life and murders. If not for the robbery, he might have been able to continue for quite a while.
6. Arthur Shawcross Returned to a Body to Have Lunch
Arthur Shawcross was known to the media as the Genesee River Killer. From 1972 until 1989, he is known to have killed at least 14 victims. He was drafted into the army to serve in Vietnam and used to boast about the horrible crimes he committed there, including beheadings and more, all of which turned out to be false since he was never in active combat.
Once he was out of the army his crime spree started with burglary and arson. He was sentenced to 22 months in prison and actually got out early after saving the life of a prison guard during a riot. The next year he killed his first victim, a 10-year-old boy. Shortly thereafter he murdered his second victim, and eight-year-old girl and was arrested the very next day for the crime. Lawyers let him plead down to manslaughter for both murders. He was released after serving 14 years, deemed to be no longer dangerous.
In 1988, Shawcross killed again, and continued to do so for at least 11 victims. Police were able to catch him in 1990 when he was captured on camera from a surveillance helicopter parked near the body of his latest victim, eating lunch and pleasuring himself. Shawcross tried to plead insanity at his trial, but no one bought it. He was sentenced to 250 years and died in prison in 2008.
5. Jeffrey Dahmer Let His Final Would-Be Victim Use the Bathroom
One of the most famous and terrifying serial killers in modern memory, Jeffrey Dahmer’s downfall is that he decided to put some trust in one of his would-be victims. That misplaced trust saved the victim’s life, and who knows how many potential future victims as well.
From the late 70s into the early 1990s, Jeffrey Dahmer murdered, dismembered, and in some cases ate parts of 17 victims. The full breadth of his crimes horrified the world and have been the subject of numerous documentaries and movies ever since.
Although Dahmer had experienced some near misses with law enforcement in the past, including one case in which a victim got away, and police actually brought the victim back to his home because he convinced the cops it was just a domestic dispute it wouldn’t be until 1991 when he made what ended up being a fatal mistake.
Dahmer had convinced a man named Tracy Edwards to come home with him. Once they were at Dahmer’s apartment, his intended victim was handcuffed and Dahmer explained that he wanted to take pictures of him and then eat his heart. Edwards assured Dahmer that he had no interest in running away from him and they could do whatever he wanted, but he wanted to go to the bathroom and maybe have a beer. Dahmer, for whatever reason, thought that was a good idea, so they went back to the living room together. Edwards proceeded to punch Dahmer in the face and run out the front door.
Edwards returned to the apartment with police who discovered photographic evidence of Dahmer’s many crimes, and a severed head of the refrigerator. Dahmer ended up being sentenced to 16 life terms in prison, but only lasted a couple of years before he was murdered by other inmates in 1994. Had he not agreed to let Edwards go to the bathroom and had a beer, he might never have been caught.
4. Maury Travis Printed a Map
Maury Travis was a suspected serial killer. He was arrested for two murders and confessed to 17, although the true number is in dispute. Travis was caught after his local newspaper ran a story on the disappearance and murder of one victim which he had a problem with.
When police investigated Travis’s home, they found what was described as a torture chamber in the basement full of bondage equipment and other tools. They are also videotapes detailing his crimes.
After the St. Louis Post-Dispatch wrote the article about one of his victims, Travis wrote them a letter in reply saying that he could show them where plenty more bodies were. He included a map in the letter that he printed from Expedia.com. Law enforcement was able to trace that map back to Travis’s computer and arrest him. He committed suicide in custody before he was able to stand trial.
3. Richard Kuklinski Bragged
Some people are incapable of doing anything without telling other people about it. That’s kind of a big problem with social media. It was also an issue for Richard Kuklinski, serial killer and hitman.
Known as The Iceman, Kuklinski also had nicknames of the Devil Himself and One Man Army. Sounds like he was a scary guy, and he was convicted of five murders, though he is known to have committed numerous other crimes. Unfortunately for a Kuklinski, he just couldn’t keep his crimes to himself.
An undercover federal agent managed to dupe Kuklinski into thinking he was a fellow criminal. The hitman spilled the beans on numerous crimes, detailing that he had laced hamburgers with cyanide and committed various other murders over the years, including how he got rid of the bodies afterwards. Lawyers tried to argue that Kuklinski was just blowing smoke when he made these statements and they weren’t real, but the problem was they matched up with real crimes.
2. Neville Heath Signed a Hotel Registry
Leaving your ID at the scene of a crime is arguably one of the stupidest things you could do as a murderer, possibly even more stupid would be signing your name at the scene because that actually takes extra effort to do. And that’s exactly what Neville Heath did.
Shortly after becoming engaged to a woman he just met, he hooked up with another woman and brought her back to his hotel room. Evidence discovered the next day suggested that he had tortured the woman before murdering her and leaving her in the room to be found by the house key for the next day. For whatever reason, however, he had signed the hotel registry with his real name when he checked in.
In a baffling twist, after writing the police a letter saying that, sure it was his room but he let another guy use it, he then left town, checked into a different hotel using a fake name this time, and then murdered another woman the exact same way. He was found guilty at trial and executed by hanging in 1946.
1. Henri Landru Bought One-Way Tickets
You can look at the way Henri Landru was captured either as an example of the man’s over efficiency or his cheapest. In the early 1900s, Landru was known to be a swindler of women. He would seduce lonely women out of their life savings and move on to someone else. It’s a con that still goes on today, but Landru took it a step further when he started committing murders.
Most of his victims were widows. Landru would meet them in his capacity as a furniture seller. After the women lost their husbands, they would come to him and attempt to sell some of their possessions. He would seduce them with promises that he could invest the little money they had, before stealing it and disappearing.
He later upped his game by claiming that he was a wealthy widower in search of a woman who had also been widowed. He met numerous women this way, and while using numerous aliases he managed to convince these women to estrange themselves from their families to be with him and they were never seen again. This happened over and over until some families began to look into the disappearances of their loved ones.
Police were unable to find bodies when they began to investigate Landru, but the man had a bad habit of keeping track of his finances in detail. This included the times that he would purchase train tickets for himself and his would-be brides. The problem was that he purchased round tickets for himself and one-way tickets for them. Not finding remains on the property of his home, neighbors pointed out that they had more than once seen thick black smoke coming from the chimney. When police searched his massive cast iron stove, they found human remains in the ashes.