Serial killers are known to be lethal with weapons in their hands, but they can also incite fear with their pens as the following creepy letters have proved. They were written by some of the most notorious and twisted killers in history.

The letters became tools to taunt the police, make demands, hurt the victims’ families, or make chilling confessions. Each one was likely written with the same hand that the killer used to slay his victims.

10 Albert Fish

Creepy serial killer Albert Fish was known as “The Boogeyman” as he preyed on small children and was a suspect in at least five brutal child murders. In 1928, he kidnapped 10-year-old Grace Budd. Then he murdered her and cannibalized her remains at an abandoned house in Westchester County, New York.

Afterward, Fish sent a letter to Budd’s mother describing in horrifying detail how he murdered the young girl. He wrote:

When all was ready, I went to the window and called her. Then I hid in a closet until she was in the room. When she saw me all naked, she began to cry and tried to run downstairs. I grabbed her, and she said she would tell her mama. How she did kick, bite, and scratch. I (then) cut her in small pieces so I could take my meat to my rooms, cook and eat it.^[1]

The letter became the downfall of Fish as police were able to trace the killer from the unique branding on the envelope he had sent.

9 Donald Harvey

Donald Harvey was a former orderly in hospitals in Ohio and Kentucky during the 1970s and 1980s. During this time, he killed an estimated 37 patients. However, the real victim count is believed to be much higher as Harvey claimed the figure is closer to 70. His killing spree “began by accident” after hooking up a patient to an empty oxygen tank, and then he just couldn’t stop.

The cold-blooded killer never showed any remorse for his crimes. In one interview, he said, “Some of those (patients) might have lasted a few more hours or a few more days, but they were all going to die. I know you think I played God, and I did.”

In a chilling letter that he wrote behind bars, the serial killer joked, “Lord, Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, change the things I can, and the wisdom to hide the bodies of those people I had to kill because they pissed me off.”^[2]

8 Dr. H.H. Holmes

Dr. H.H. Holmes was a twisted serial killer who built a “Murder Castle” in Chicago with the intention to kill as many victims as possible. The 100-room building had long, winding corridors that would disorient victims. It also had trapdoors, false walls, and gas chambers. Holmes then sold the cadavers to medical research institutions, and the organs were traded on the black market.

On April 11, 1896, he wrote a full letter of confession to the Philadelphia North American newspaper:

I was born with the devil in me. I could not help the fact that I was a murderer, no more than the poet can help the inspiration to sing. I was born with the “Evil One” standing as my sponsor beside the bed where I was ushered into the world, and he has been with me since.^[3]

One month later, he was hanged at Moyamensing Prison for his crimes.

7 Gary Ridgway

Gary Ridgway became known as the “Green River Killer” after he confessed to murdering 48 sex workers and runaways in the state of Washington during the 1980s and 1990s. Ridgway said, “I picked prostitutes because I thought I could kill as many of them as I wanted without getting caught.”

In 1984, he wrote a letter about the murders titled “what you need to know about the green river man” and sent it to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. In disturbing detail, the killer wrote about necrophilia and cutting off the fingernails of victims before signing off as “callmefred.”^[4]

Police claimed that it was a “brazen attempt to throw off investigators.” At the time, they did not follow up on this key evidence. Ridgway’s game of playing cat and mouse with the police finally came to an end in 2001 when DNA evidence connected him to the murders. He was spared the death penalty as part of a plea bargain where he disclosed the locations of the missing bodies. His plea bargain raised his murder convictions to 49.

6 Ian Brady

The “Moors Murderers,” Ian Brady and Myra Hindley, killed five children between 10 and 17 years old in the early 1960s. Three graves were discovered on Saddleworth Moor in Manchester, England, but the killers never revealed the final resting place of their other victims. Hindley claimed that she was under Brady’s spell and that she took part in the crimes against her will. However, he tells a different story.

In one letter that he wrote from prison to a journalist, Brady explained:

Hindley has crafted a Victorian melodrama in which she portrays herself as being forced to murder serially. We both habitually carried revolvers and went for target practice on the moors. If I were mistreating her, she could have shot me dead at any time. For 30 years, she said she was acting out of love for me; now she maintains she killed because she hated me—a completely irrational hypothesis. In character, she is essentially a chameleon, adopting whatever camouflage will suit and voicing whatever she believes the individual wishes to hear. She can kill, both in cold blood or in a rage.^[5]

5 The Axeman Of New Orleans

The Axeman of New Orleans is an unidentified serial killer who butchered six victims and injured 12 others in 1918 and 1919. A letter believed to be from the killer was published in newspapers and claimed that he would spare anyone who was playing jazz music.

Dated March 13, 1919, the anonymous killer wrote:

I am very fond of jazz music, and I swear by all the devils in the nether regions that every person shall be spared in whose home a jazz band is in full swing at the time I have just mentioned. If everyone has a jazz band going, well, then, so much the better for you people. One thing is certain and that is that some of your people who do not jazz it out on that specific Tuesday night (if there be any) will get the axe.^[6]

Then the murders suddenly stopped as quickly as they had started. The crimes remain unsolved to this day.

4 The Beltway Snipers

Over a three-week span in 2002, the “Beltway snipers” killed 10 people in the states of Maryland and Virginia. (Another seven individuals were murdered elsewhere.) John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo shot each victim with a single bullet fired from a distance. Then the killers vanished.

They wrote down their demands in a three-page letter with a cover note that read, “For you, Mr. Police. Call Me God.” They demanded $10 million in “unlimited withdrawals” or the lives of children in the area would be threatened. The letter was left pinned to a tree outside a restaurant where the snipers had shot and wounded a man who was out to dinner with his wife.

They were eventually caught when one of the snipers mentioned an unsolved murder in Montgomery, Alabama, in a traced phone call. Authorities were able to link both of the murders with fingerprints and make an arrest. Muhammad was put to death by lethal injection, and Malvo received a life sentence.^[7]

3 Dennis Rader

Dennis Rader gave himself the title “BTK” after his chilling murder method of “Bind, Torture, Kill.” Between 1974 and 1991, Rader killed 10 people in Sedgwick County, Kansas, with gaps in between to dedicate more of his time to being a family man. Rader believed that he could outwit the police, so he sent them taunting letters.

One of his poorly written letters read:

When this monster enter my brain, I will never know. But, it here to stay. Society can be thankfull (sic) that there are ways for people like me to relieve myself at time by daydreams of some victim being torture and being mine. It a big compicated (sic) game my friend of the monster play putting victims number down, follow them, checking up on them waiting in the dark, waiting, waiting. Maybe you can stop him. I can’t. He has areadly (sic) chosen his next victim.^[8]

He signed it, “Yours, Truly Guiltily, BTK.”

He was caught after he upgraded his technology and sent his letters on a floppy disc, which was immediately traced to him.

2 Jack The Ripper

The terrifying case of Jack the Ripper still haunts London today. In 1888, the chilling serial killer targeted impoverished areas around Whitechapel. The bodies of his victims were discovered with their throats cut open and with abdominal mutilations.

On September 27, 1888, the Central News Agency received this letter (which they believed was a hoax):

The next job I do, I shall clip the lady’s ears off and send to the police officers just for jolly, wouldn’t you. Keep this letter back till I do a bit more work, then give it out straight. My knife’s so nice and sharp I want to get to work right away if I get a chance. Good Luck. Yours truly, Jack the Ripper.^[9]

Three days later, a double murder took place. True to his word, the ripper cut a portion of the earlobe off his victims. The case has never been solved.

1 The Zodiac Killer

In the late 1960s, the Zodiac Killer targeted four men and three women between the ages of 16 and 29 in Benicia, Vallejo, Lake Berryessa, and San Francisco. Five victims were killed during his reign of terror. He sent several letters, including four cryptograms, to the local Bay Area press. It’s believed that his true identity will be revealed if the ciphers can be decoded.

Only one of the ciphers has ever been solved.^[10] Schoolteacher Donald Harden and his wife, Bettye, cracked the code which reads:

I LIKE KILLING PEOPLE BECAUSE IT IS SO MUCH FUN IT IS MORE FUN THAN KILLING WILD GAME IN THE FORREST BECAUSE MAN IS THE MOST DANGEROUE ANAMAL OF ALL TO KILL SOMETHING GIVES ME THE MOST THRILLING EXPERENCE IT IS EVEN BETTER THAN GETTING YOUR ROCKS OFF WITH A GIRL THE BEST PART OF IT IS THAE WHEN I DIE I WILL BE REBORN IN PARADICE AND ALL THEI HAVE KILLED WILL BECOME MY SLAVES I WILL NOT GIVE YOU MY NAME BECAUSE YOU WILL TRY TO SLOI DOWN OR ATOP MY COLLECTIOG OF SLAVES FOR MY AFTERLIFE. EBEORIETEMETHHPITI.

The unsolved ciphers still frustrate the FBI.

Cheish Merryweather is a true crime fan and an oddities fanatic. Can either be found at house parties telling everyone that Charles Manson was only 157 centimeters (5’2″) or at home reading true crime magazines. Twitter: @thecheish

Serial killers may be worse overall, but serial pooping is nothing to sniff at. Actually, on second thought, don’t sniff. Keep your nose closed, for the people on this list are fecal-minded freaks who have befouled their communities by leaving their excrement everywhere. And we do mean everywhere: pools, car hoods, football fields, busy sidewalks, etc.

See Also: Top 10 Places With Surprising Poop Problems

These serial poopers pulled down their trousers and took a literal dump on public decency. Some have been caught and publicly shamed. Others remain smelly and elusive.

Hopefully, this list can shed the light needed to bring the mysterious serial poopers to justice. As a society, we cannot let such a scatological scourge exist—that is, unless we want the poop of strangers invading our own homes!

10 The Pool Pooper Of Michigan

It’s a hot summer day. You have worked hard and long hours so you can enjoy some time at your local pool. It’s Michigan, and such pleasures are few and fleeting. Then, without warning, a nasty brown object comes floating your way. It’s not a Baby Ruth bar.

This nightmare became a reality for the residents of Macomb County, Michigan, in summer 2019. Local news reported that an unknown serial pooper was on the loose, and he preferred to leave his natural evidence behind in a subdivision’s swimming pool.^[1]

The story all started when the board president of the Buckingham Recreational Facilities Association wrote a memo decrying the unknown individual pooping in the subdivision’s pool located near 23 Mile Road. The serial pooper’s harmful activities had already caused several pool closures and costly cleanups by the time the memo was circulated.

Fortunately for all lovers of the Buckingham Woods’ community pool, the serial pooper was caught on video defecating. A member of the community was identified and banned from the pool for the rest of the summer. The name of this delinquent has not been released to the public, which could mean that the offender is under 18.

9 Holly Malone, The Serial Pooper Of Simsbury

Holly Malone’s mug shot says it all: I’m a serial pooper, and I’m (kinda) embarrassed about it. Malone should be embarrassed. According to police in Connecticut, Malone, 43, was responsible for a string of dumps in a residential cul-de-sac during the fall and winter of 2017.

On November 7, 2017, the first selectman for the town of East Granby, Connecticut, contacted police to inform them that poop had been discovered in the middle of Kirkstone Drive. The assailant left behind toilet paper at the scene, too. Nine days later, Kirkstone Drive was once again peppered with poo. The final assault took place on December 5, 2017, but this time, security cameras caught the offender’s vehicle.^[2]

Malone was arrested in February 2018 as part of a traffic stop that had nothing to do with her bodily waste. When the serial pooper was questioned, she claimed that she kept defiling Kirkstone Road in East Granby because she could not make it home in time to use her own toilet.

Malone was taken into custody and publicly apologized for her “stupidity.” She also mentioned that she was lactose intolerant and that her mass pooping was due to her dairy allergy.

8 The Parking Lot Pooper

Believe it or not, another New England woman tried to pull the “I couldn’t make it home in time” defense to excuse her serial pooping. It did not work this time, either.

In January 2020, 51-year-old Andrea Grocer of Ashland, Massachusetts, was arrested for repeatedly leaving her dookie behind in the parking lot of the Natick Outdoor Store in Natick, Massachusetts. When the news broke, Natick police officers admitted that they had been chasing the “Parking Lot Pooper” for over a month.

At first, employees at the store thought that some animal was using their parking lot as an open-air toilet. That idea went up in stinky smoke when toilet paper was found at the scene as well.

Armed with the knowledge that the pooper was a human, a Natick police officer conducted a stakeout where they saw a 2018 Lincoln MKX SUV pull into the store’s parking lot around 7 AM. When the police officer confronted her, Grocer immediately defended her actions by stating that she suffered from irritable bowel syndrome.^[3]

This could be the case, although eyewitnesses later told police that they saw Grocer’s Lincoln SUV waiting around the area for 10 minutes before pulling into the parking lot.

Store manager Henry Kanner could not offer any idea as to why Grocer had targeted his store for her nefarious deeds. Better yet, given that Grocer worked as a live-in nanny just four blocks away from the store and her place of employment contained a fully functioning bathroom, no one is quite sure why Grocer chose to become the Parking Lot Pooper.

7 Brisbane’s Poo Jogger

Lest you think that serial pooping is an exclusively American phenomenon, the city of Brisbane, Australia, experienced a rash of serial pooping in 2018. The pooper, whose nickname in the press was the “Poo Jogger,” was unmasked as 64-year-old Andrew Douglas Macintosh. His identity was revealed thanks to a cutting-edge cyber investigation carried out by everyday Internet users.

In total, Macintosh left behind his poo at least 30 times between 2017 and 2018, and each one of these awful acts occurred in the Brisbane suburb of Greenslopes. Fed up with finding poop on their block nightly, two residents purchased a night-vision camera with motion sensors and put it up near the designating pooping spot.

The video captured several images of the serial pooper. He turned out to be a jogger who followed the same route each time. Finally, the video camera caught the Poo Jogger doing the nasty.

The jogger turned out to be Macintosh, a major executive with the Aveo Group and a member of the Inclusive Brisbane Board. Besides being well-to-do and the owner of a posh sports car, Macintosh preferred to take his dumps on the street. For this crime, he was charged with public nuisance, fined $378, and forced to leave his job.^[4]

6 The Bowel Movement Bandit

LeBron James may be the most famous son of Akron, Ohio, but he has competition in the form of an unidentified serial pooper. Between 2012 and 2015, the Akron resident known as the “Bowel Movement Bandit” left behind his doo-doo on cars and even on children’s toys. Despite capturing the bandit’s face on a time-lapse camera, Akron police are still searching for the man who terrorized their neighborhoods for so long.

The resident who set up the camera that caught the Bowel Movement Bandit in the act told the NBC affiliate WKYC that the pooper had hit his family’s car at least eight times. This caused him to ask his son: “Who do you have mad at you?” Accusations were flung at different neighborhood residents, and the sheer volume of aggressive poop began to tear the small community apart.

In total, Akron investigators believe that the Bowel Movement Bandit has dumped on at least 19 cars in the Kenmore neighborhood. Furthermore, the man tormented residents by pooping in front yards and on children’s toys that had to be thoroughly sanitized the following day.^[5]

Despite knowing the Bowel Movement Bandit’s face, the pooper’s identity remains a mystery. The good news? Thanks to media reports about his disgusting crimes, the Bowel Movement Bandit has seemingly gone underground. There have been no new poo reports in Akron since 2015.

5 The Staten Island Serial Pooper

The borough of Staten Island, New York, was once home to the largest man-made structure in the world. That structure just happened to be the Fresh Kills Landfill, otherwise known as a gigantic dump. Millions of jokes have been made about Staten Island being New York’s garbage disposal, but at least one resident took these jokes to heart. As a result, Eltingville, Staten Island, has a serial pooper problem.

It all began when 48-year-old Andrea Rosenblum went public with her nightmarish situation: An unknown man kept pooping right outside her home. Worst of all, the police department has repeatedly told Rosenblum that there’s nothing they can do to stop it.^[6]

Angered over the lack of anti-poop deterrence from the authorities, Rosenblum installed a camera outside her home. She caught the pooper red-assed: He was shown to be an average-size man carrying two bags. On two different occasions—July 13, 2019, and July 17, 2019—the man wore the exact same outfit as he dropped his pants and went to work.

He always does his business before fleeing into the night. Rosenblum found that the poopings all occurred after midnight. Rosenblum, who has two children aged 12 and 9, claims that she doesn’t know her pooper-tormentor.

4 The Pool Pooper Of Lincoln, Nebraska

From Michigan to Nebraska, there seems to be something about swimming pools that drives Midwestern serial poopers crazy.

In September 2019, the Facebook page belonging to the Eastridge Pool in Lincoln, Nebraska, posted a security camera video showing an unidentified woman pooping near the pool’s concession stand. The crime occurred in broad daylight.

The security camera footage was a breakthrough because the Eastridge Pool had been having a problem with wayward feces for five years. Since 2013, the unknown local woman had been depositing her digested food near the pool.^[7]

Sadly, according to pool manager Ryan Rieker, the security cameras have not scared off the serial pooper. The pool’s best hope is that the media blasts the woman’s image everywhere, thus forcing her to go underground or at least take her pooping indoors.

3 The Mad Pooper

Colorado Springs has seen its fair share of murder and mayhem over the years. As of 2017, it is also the home of the “Mad Pooper.”

As per security camera footage, the Mad Pooper is a slim female jogger. However slight she may be, the Mad Pooper has done outsize damage to the Budde family and their Colorado Springs neighborhood. According to the Budde family, who have been the Mad Pooper’s primary target, the jogger left behind poop on their front yard once a week during a seven-week period in the summer and early fall of 2017.

While the Budde family was able to laugh at the situation, Colorado Springs Police Department Sergeant Johnathan Sharketti admitted, “For someone to repeatedly do such a thing . . . it’s uncharted territory for me.”^[8]

Despite the fact that the Mad Pooper made international news for repeatedly defiling the Budde family’s front yard, the Colorado Springs police went without a name or even a viable suspect for days. Charmin, one of the world’s leading producers of toilet paper, even offered a year’s supply of toilet paper to the Mad Pooper as long as she turned herself in.

Then, in late September 2017, a YouTube video surfaced in which a man claiming to represent the family of a local woman named “Shirley” apologized on behalf of the Mad Pooper, aka “Shirley.” The video claimed that the Mad Pooper suffers from a traumatic brain injury that causes her bowels to move uncontrollably.

The video also demanded that all other videos showing the Mad Pooper doing her business be removed from the Internet because Shirley’s actions were protected by the US Constitution. This man’s video has since been removed from YouTube.

That was the last that anyone heard about the Mad Pooper of Colorado Springs.

2 Mr. Poop

Japan is known throughout the world as an orderly society that places an emphasis on manners and cleanliness. Nobody in his right mind would stereotype the Japanese as “dirty.” However, one Tokyo man known only as “Mr. Poop” flies in the face of Japanese customs.

According to police in Tokyo, Mr. Poop has left pieces of himself behind on at least 10 different occasions in the city’s Akihabara district. During one instance in summer 2019, Mr. Poop, who has been described as a man in his thirties, was caught in the act and forced to flee the scene. Watery-eyed eyewitnesses said that Mr. Poop wore black trousers and had a blue backpack.^[9]

He seems to prefer defecating in four locations: a gap between one building and a model train store, outside of a restaurant, the entrance to another office building, and the base of a utility pole. The pooping has become such a toxic nuisance that nearby businesses have put up warning signs. Hideo Yamada, a lawyer who sometimes appears on Japanese television, believes that Mr. Poop could be charged with disruption of business.

1 The Super Pooper

In the annals of serial pooping, there is no more infamous miscreant than New Jersey’s “Super Pooper.” When his identity was revealed in mid-2018, he earned a new nickname—the “Pooperintendent.”

On May 1, 2018, 42-year-old Thomas Tramaglini, the superintendent of Kenilworth Public Schools, was arrested for pooping under the bleachers near the football field and track belonging to Holmdel High School. The coaches and staff had been finding feces every day in that area, so they set up video surveillance to catch the culprit. Tramaglini is the one they caught.

At the time, he lived just 4.8 kilometers (3 mi) away from Holmdel High. Reportedly, he pooped near the track and football field during his morning jog. For this, he was charged with public defecation, lewdness, and littering. Tramaglini was also placed on a paid leave of absence from his job.

In his defense, the former superintendent said that he had “experience[d] the immediate and emergent need to defecate” while running. He blamed it on a medical condition, runner’s diarrhea, that affects his colon when he runs. He also denied being a serial pooper.

Tramaglini pleaded guilty to public defecation (one time), for which he paid a $500 fine. All other charges were dropped in a plea agreement.

At Kenilworth, Tramaglini made a yearly income of $147,504. The incident forced him to resign from his position, but he did receive about $100,000 in severance. Previously, he had served as the Chief Academic Officer in Keansburg, New Jersey. He was also a part-time lecturer at Rutgers University.^[10]

His story made the international news, and his mug shot got passed around the Internet. In response, the disgraced Tramaglini sued the Holmdel Police Department for releasing his mug shot. “It’s like getting photographed and fingerprinted for a speeding ticket,” said his attorney, Matthew Adams.

The lawsuit, which was ultimately thrown out, sought $1 million in damages. It alleged that Tramaglini had been subjected to “negligent and intentional infliction of emotional distress” and defamation. Tramaglini worries that the news story of his “bathroom emergency” will make him unemployable for the near future. The ridicule has also been hard on his young kids.

About The Author: Benjamin Welton is a freelance writer based in New England.

Serial killers are hardly a phenomenon confined to the 20th and 21st centuries. Many periods of history have been witness to serial murders of their own. The Old West was a well-known time of lawlessness, so it’s no surprise that there were many active serial killers stalking the prairies and deserts of North America.

Whether they murdered for profit, pleasure, or both, the impact on the victims, their families, and the community was always the same. The ruthlessness of the following crimes may shock you, so mentally prepare yourself for the brutality to come.

10 The Bloody Benders

The Bloody Benders were a family who moved into Osage Township, Kansas, in late 1870. This family of four would end up killing as many as 21 people.^[1] The West could be a dangerous and violent place, so a safe area of peace and refuge would have been a cherished thing. This is how the Benders lured their victims in. They would play the part of a loving family with a cozy inn for weary travelers to stay, and when their guests had their backs turned, the Benders would bash in their skulls, steal their money, and bury them out back.

Several people who stopped at the Benders’ place told a tale about how they had almost become the serial-killing family’s victims. They said the Benders had a sheet hung up in a room that the men would hide behind while the women would try to get the guests to sit in a very specific chair facing away from the sheet. When they refused to sit, Ma Bender became enraged, and then the male Benders stepped out from behind the sheet. The men quickly left, likely avoiding becoming the Benders’ next victims.

The Benders themselves ultimately escaped before they could be captured, and they were never found.

9 Stephen Dee Richards

Stephen Dee Richards has been called the Old West’s Ted Bundy, but in his day and age, he was dubbed the Nebraska Fiend.^[2] He was a charming and well-spoken man. Unlike Bundy, Stephen seems to have had no preferred type of victim when it came to killing. He murdered a young man he had a disagreement with, and he killed a mother and her three children with an ax. He said of killing the family that it was no different to him than killing jackrabbits.

Stephen ultimately murdered nine people in total. He did not escape justice, however, and was hanged in 1879.

8 Charles Kennedy

Charles Kennedy was a mountain man who lived near Eagle Nest, New Mexico. One day in 1870, Charles’s wife came running into a saloon crying. Incredibly upset, she confessed to the townspeople what she had witnessed. Her husband had been luring travelers into their home to kill them and steal their money. The very night before, Charles had done just that, but his son was in the room speaking to the traveler. The traveler asked if there were many “Indians” around, and the son responded, “Can’t you smell the one Papa put under the floor?”^[3] Charles flew into a rage, murdered both the traveler and his own son, and then locked his wife in the house. The woman waited for her husband to pass out after getting drunk and then escaped out a chimney.

The men at the saloon went after Charles along with a man named Clay Allison, who was known to be good with a gun. Charles was brought to the courthouse, but after the townspeople heard rumors that his lawyer was going to get him off, they took matters into their own hands. A group of several men took Charles from his jail cell, tied a noose around his neck, and dragged him behind a horse until he was strangled to death.

7 Boone Helm

Levi Boone Helm was a mountain man and gunslinger, but he is best known as the Kentucky Cannibal. Boone was part of a gang that would steal and murder all over Oregon and Idaho, but by the time Boone had joined this group, he had already killed many men.

One day, Boone and some others got caught up in a snowstorm. The animals and all the men perished, except for Boone and a man named Burton. They had discovered an empty cabin, but it had no food. According to Boone, he had started trying to light a fire when he heard a gunshot and discovered that his companion had killed himself. It did not take long for Boone to decide to cannibalize the body.^[4]

Boone would make it out of the winter storm and return to his life of crime, but he wouldn’t evade justice forever. He and the rest of his gang were eventually arrested and brought before a court. Boone tried to defend himself, but it was all in vain. He was convicted and hanged.

6 The Servant Girl Annihilator

The Servant Girl Annihilator was a serial killer who murdered seven women and one man in Austin, Texas, in 1884 and 1885. He also maimed six other women and two men. The murders were thought to have been partially motivated by racism because many of the victims were black. The murderer would typically attack his victims while they were asleep before dragging the bodies outside.^[5]

The police were given conflicting reports on what the killer looked like, with differing accounts as to whether he was white or black. As many as 400 men were arrested in connection to the crimes, but none were convicted. To this day, there is speculation as to who the Servant Girl Annihilator was, with theories as mundane and reasonable as Nathan Elgin, a cook who was shot by the police while attacking a woman around the time the killings stopped, to Jack the Ripper, because of course.

5 James Miller

James Miller, aka Miller the Killer, was a murderer-for-hire. He was also called Deacon Miller because he would regularly attend church and seemingly had no vices; he didn’t smoke or drink. Despite his pious behavior in public, James obviously had a darker professional and private life. He would often kill people he didn’t like. When his sister was engaged to be married to a man whom James despised, the fiance was mysteriously murdered. James are arrested and convicted of the murder, but the charges were overturned on a technicality. James would eventually turn his passion for killing into a profession, charging large sums of money to have someone executed.

Because of James’s pious outward appearance, no one in his community had any idea what he was capable of. He actually had a brief stint as a lawman. James’s downfall ultimately came when he assassinated a former deputy US marshal. This caused an enraged mob to lynch him. Right before he was hanged, he reportedly shouted, “Let her rip!”^[6]

4 John Wesley Hardin

John Wesley Hardin was the last man you’d think would become a vicious outlaw. Being born to and raised by a preacher didn’t stop John from getting into trouble at an early age. His first kill was at the age of 15, and he would not stop after just one man. It’s possible he killed up to 42 men. His temper was well-known, and it was common for him to murder anyone who bothered him. John didn’t just kill troublesome people, of course; in his time, it was common to kill people and then rob them.

John was eventually imprisoned for his crimes, a rarity for someone on this list, but he didn’t evade vigilante justice altogether. After spending 17 years in prison, John lived in El Paso, Texas. As you can imagine, with that temper and all, he was not well-liked. One day, John got into a heated argument with a lawman named John Selman. Not long afterward, Selman walked up behind John and shot him in the head.^[7]

3 Bill Longley

Bill Longley was a psychopath through and through. By the time he was 20, he had already killed several times. Bill was known to murder anyone who irritated him, and he was an avowed racist, so black people and Mexicans were frequent targets of his cruelty. Bill and some of his friends once happened upon three black men named Green Evans, Pryer Evans, and Ned, who were freed slaves and were traveling to visit friends. Bill and his cohorts held the men up at gunpoint. The poor men panicked and tried to escape, but Green Evans was shot and killed.

Bill’s final murder would be that of his childhood friend Wilson Anderson. Bill was already a wanted man, but this put new bounties on his head, and vigilante groups tried to capture him. Bill would eventually be caught and convicted. Longley was hanged but did not receive a quick and painless death. The rope was loose at first, so Bill’s knees hit the ground. Then, when the rope was pulled taut, he slowly suffocated. It would take 11 minutes of strangulation before he finally died.^[8]

2 Liver-Eating Johnson

John Jeremiah Garrison Johnston was a mountain man who was dubbed Liver-Eating Johnson. John’s life is shrouded in legend, the biggest of which involves how he earned his nickname. According to the tales, after his wife was killed by a Crow Native American, John had a vendetta against the entire tribe. They say that he killed over 300 Crow natives, scalped them, and ate their livers. This was a great insult to the Crow because they believed that the liver was vital to go on to the afterlife.

The truth, though, was that John probably never ate anyone’s liver; the rumor that he did so most likely started as a dark joke he told some people and went wild from there.^[9] John would eventually make peace with the Crow despite butchering scores of them, or so the legend goes. In actuality, the Crow were thought to be very friendly with American frontiersmen. In this case, it is hard to distinguish fact from fiction.

John Jeremiah Garrison Johnston died in 1900, penniless and without any family to speak of.

1 Delphine LaLaurie

Delphine LaLaurie was a wealthy socialite who lived in New Orleans and went down in history for her monstrous treatment of slaves. Her torture of her slaves was discovered in 1834, when one elderly slave tried to burn down Delphine’s home. She was trying to kill herself in order to escape LaLaurie’s brutal punishments.

After being brought to the house by the fire, authorities also found the attic, where several slaves were in various states of torture. Previously, Delphine had actually whipped a little girl off a roof, and the police had forced her to sell her slaves. This was all for naught, as Delphine had her relatives buy her slaves for her and then sneak them back into her house.

In a shocking act of compassion for slaves for the time period, Delphine’s neighbors actually formed a mob and drove her and her family from their home.^[10]

One would think that serial killers are a uniquely-American thing, thanks to ‘true crime’ podcasts and TV shows that tend to overstate that phenomenon. Look at some of the most gruesome serial killers of the past few centuries or so, however, and you’d realize that serial murder is a shockingly-common occurrence throughout the world, from countries like Indonesia to China to Russia to Japan.

10. Ahmed Suradji, Indonesia

Ahmad Suradji, also known by nicknames like Nasib Kelewang or just ‘Datuk’, was an Indonesian cattle breeder who later turned into one of the country’s most notorious serial killers. Born on January 10, 1949, he admitted to the brutal murder of 42 girls and women over an 11-year period. His victims, aged 11 to 30, were usually strangled with a cable after being buried up to their waist in the ground, all as a part of a ritual he believed would grant him enhanced powers. 

Suradji was arrested on May 2, 1997, after bodies were discovered near his home in Medan, North Sumatra. He claimed that he had received instructions from the ghost of his deceased father, urging him to kill 70 women and drink their saliva to become a mystic healer. He also practiced as a sorcerer – or ‘dukun’ in local culture – leading to a number of women seeking his advice on matters like beauty and wealth. 

Suradji’s trial began on December 11, 1997, resulting in a guilty verdict on April 27, 1998. He was sentenced to death by firing squad for his crimes and executed on July 10, 2008. 

9. Mikhail Popkov, Russia

Mikhail Viktorovich Popkov was a Russian police officer and convicted serial killer responsible for a series of brutal crimes in Siberia between 1992 and 2010. Born in March, 1964, in the Angarsk region of the Soviet Union, Popkov worked as a security guard and later as a police officer in Irkutsk. 

Popkov, also known as ‘The Werewolf’ and the ‘Angarsk Maniac’, would lure his victims by offering them a free ride in his police car while in uniform. Once alone, he would sexually assault and brutally kill them using various weapons like knives, axes, and baseball bats, with the bodies often being mutilated beyond recognition. Despite widespread suspicions and even testimonies from surviving victims, Popkov eluded capture for over two decades.

A breakthrough came in 2012, when random DNA tests were conducted on 3,500 police officers including Popkov. The evidence decisively linked him to the crimes, ultimately leading to his arrest in 2015, when he was convicted of 22 murders and sentenced to life in prison. Popkov confessed to an additional 59 killings two years later, bringing his total victim count to at least 81. 

8. Andrei Chikatilo, Russian SFSR

Andrei Chikatilo, also known as ‘The Butcher of Rostov’ and the ‘Rostov Ripper’, was an infamous Soviet-era serial killer who operated in the Rostov region of the Russian SFSR between 1978 and 1990. Born in Ukraine in 1936, Chikatilo originally served in the Soviet Army and worked as a teacher. His murder spree began in 1978, when he abducted and murdered a nine-year-old girl, followed by multiple rapes and murders of women, children, and prostitutes across the region.

Despite numerous complaints and rumors about his behavior from students and other peers, Chikatilo evaded conviction for many years, largely due to the deteriorating social and economic conditions of the Soviet Union during that time. Ultimately, an intensive police investigation led to his arrest in 1990. Chikatilo was convicted of 53 instances of murder in 1992, and executed for his crimes in February 1994.

7. Yang Xinhai, China

Yang Xinhai, also known as ‘The Monster Killer’, was born in July, 1968, in the Henan province of China. Growing up in poverty as the youngest of four children in his family, he dropped out of school and began working as a laborer, though his criminal activities soon landed him in the re-education labor camps for theft and robbery. 

From 1999 to 2003, Yang committed a series of crimes including the murder and rape of at least 67 people and 23 women across several provinces of China, respectively. His modus operandi involved breaking into victims’ homes at night and killing the entire family with improvised weapons. Yang managed to evade capture by planning his attacks carefully, as he was adept at changing his appearance at will and getting rid of the evidence. 

All that would come to an end in November, 2003, when he was arrested during a routine inspection and subsequently linked to the crimes through DNA evidence. For his horrible crimes, Yang Xinhai was sentenced to death and executed by firing squad on February 14, 2004. 

6. Alexander Pichushkin, Russia

Also sometimes called ‘The Chessboard Killer’, Alexander Pichushkin was another notorious serial murderer to emerge from the chaos of the final years of the Soviet Union. Born in April, 1974, in Moscow, Pichushkin suffered a serious head injury as a child and spent time in an institute for the disabled. He became an exceptional chess player, often playing and winning against much older opponents in Bitsa Park. The death of his beloved grandfather and his subsequent drinking habit, however, led to a drastic change in his personality.

During the investigation, Pichushkin claimed that he murdered his first victim in 1992. He usually targeted homeless men, luring them with offers of vodka before brutally attacking them from behind with a melee weapon, usually a hammer. He left their bodies in Bitsa Park or drowned them in a sewer, making the exact number of his victims unknown. 

Pichushkin was arrested on June 16, 2006, at the age of 33, before being convicted of 48 murders and three attempted murders in 2007. Due to the suspension of the death penalty in Russia by that time, Pichushkin received a life sentence for his crimes.

5. Anatoly Onoprienko, Soviet Ukraine

Anatoly Yuriyovych Onoprienko – also known as ‘The Beast of Ukraine’, ‘The Terminator’, and ‘Citizen O’, among many other media-nicknames – was a Soviet Ukrainian serial killer who confessed to the murders of 52 people. He was active between 1989 to 1995, and his modus operandi involved selecting isolated houses, creating a commotion to gain the occupants’ attention, and then systematically killing them. He typically started with the adult male, followed by the spouse, and finally the children. To cover his tracks, Onoprienko often set the buildings on fire and didn’t hesitate to eliminate any additional witnesses that could potentially implicate him.

After his arrest on April 16, 1996, Onoprienko was found in possession of the murder weapons used during the crimes, along with several souvenirs taken from his victims. Initially confessing to eight killings, Anatoly Onoprienko later admitted to a total of 52 victims. For these murders, Onoprienko was convicted and sentenced to life in prison.

4. Martha Rendell, Australia

Martha Rendell was convicted and hanged in 1909 for committing one of the most horrifying crimes uncovered by the Western Australia Police. Married to one Thomas Morris, she murdered three of his children by swabbing their throats with spirits of salts. Although the children suffered slow and agonizing deaths, the crimes went unnoticed until one of the siblings, George Morris, reported his stepmother’s actions to the authorities.

The investigation was delayed by the difficulty in determining the effects of spirits of salts on the victims, even if suspicions were raised when it was discovered that she had purchased large quantities of the toxic substance during the children’s supposed illnesses. It was only when the autopsies proved the presence of a poisonous substance that caused inflammation and hemorrhaging of the children’s bowels that she was finally convicted. Martha Rendell was hanged on October 6, 1909, in Fremantle Prison. 

3. Bruno Lüdke, Germany

Bruno Lüdke was a German murderer who’s still remembered as one of Europe’s most prolific serial killers. Born in 1909, he’s believed to have committed more than 80 murders, though the real number still remains unknown. His killing spree also involved several sadistic sexual crimes, lasting for about 15 years beginning in 1928.

Most of Lüdke’s crimes occurred during the chaotic interwar period in Germany, and he usually preyed on victims whose disappearance would not be immediately noticed. He was classified as mentally defective by the Nazi government, resulting in his forced sterilization under the eugenics policies prevalent at the time. Lüdke was arrested in 1943 on a murder charge and subsequently sent to a Vienna hospital, where he was the subject of a Nazi medical experiment that led to his death in 1944.

2. Mariam Soulakiotis, Greece

Sometimes called ‘Mother Rasputin’ in popular Greek culture, Mariam Soulakiotis was a Greek Orthodox abbess and convicted serial killer active between 1939 and 1951. Convicted for committing a series of murders in the Peukovounogiatrissas Monastery near Keratea, Greece, Soulakiotis usually lured wealthy women into the convent and tortured them until they were forced to donate their wealth. She embezzled the money and, in a few cases, ended up murdering some of her victims. 

For her crimes, Soulakiotis was indicted in February 1951 and charged with homicide, fraud, forgery, blackmail, and torture. She would be sentenced to life in prison in 1952, where she died in 1954, even if she never officially confessed to her crimes.

1. Luis Garavito, Colombia

Luis Garavito is a Colombian serial killer born in January 1957, in Génova, Colombia. He’s still remembered for his brutal crimes committed during the 1990s, largely due to his troubled childhood that included persistent abuse from his father and a neighbor. He left his family at the age of 16 and became a farmhand, struggling with alcoholism and developing a morbid attraction towards children before long.

Garavito’s killing spree lasted for about seven years, and his victims were mostly young boys from impoverished backgrounds, whom he lured with promises of money or drinks while disguising himself as a monk or priest. He was finally arrested in 1999 for sexually assaulting a young boy, leading to his confession to the murders of about 140 boys. He was convicted for a total of 189 murders, however, resulting in a sentence of 835 years.

As bizarre as it may seem, a number of women have married serial killers. According to psychologists, some wed such murderers due to a sexual paraphilia known as hybristophilia. Professor John Money, a sexologist, explains that such wives are sexually aroused at being with a person who’s been convicted of having “committed an outrage or crime, such as rape, murder, or armed robbery.”

While this paraphilia may account for some such relationships, other psychologists, authors of books about such women, and serial killers’ own wives offer additional explanations that are also insightful, reasonable, convincing, and unusual. Let’s examine 10 reasons women marry serial killers.

Related: 10 Deadliest Serial Killer Couples By Kill Count

10 Vicarious Celebrity

The title of Denise Mina’s online article asks, “Why are women drawn to men behind bars?” It is not easy to date prisoners, she writes. Not only might a woman have to exchange letters with several, or even many, prisoners before making “a sustainable connection” with one of them, but she must also make a “considerable effort to meet” him since he resides “in [a] secure containment” facility. Despite such obstacles, she persists. Why?

Simply put, one answer to this question, Mina suggests, is that a serial killer’s notoriety is perceived as glamorous. By being married to him, a woman may view herself as having achieved “vicarious celebrity.” Some serial killers, such as Richard Ramirez and Ted Bundy, even had groupies, but only one woman could claim such a man as her husband. The bride of a serial killer is apt to get a lot of attention.^[1]

9 Fantasy of Future Bliss

Sheila Isenberg, author of Women Who Love Men Who Kill, would agree with Mina. One reason that women marry serial killers is to garner attention for themselves. However, hope motivates other women. They endure the hardships presented by having a relationship with a man behind bars because they envision a future with him.

In this image, they feel that he will be able to devote himself to her when he is freed from prison, and together, they can live happily ever after. This fantasy of future bliss, in which the lovers “will begin to share a life of unending romance,” is all but impossible, Isenberg points out since such criminals are seldom released.^[2]

8 Raising Public Awareness

For some women who marry serial killers, their decision has nothing to do with the desire to enjoy “vicarious celebrity” or a fantasy of future bliss. Public defender and mitigation specialist Rosalie Martinez is one of them.

As Katherine Ramsland, Ph.D., points out in her online article “Women Who Love Serial Killers,” Oscar Ray Bolin, a former trucker, had been convicted 10 times for raping and killing three women in Florida, but his convictions had been overturned on technicalities: “errors” had been made in the proceedings of his trial.

Rosalie Martinez believed in the innocence of the man she loved so much that, in 1995, she left her husband, with whom she had four children, and married Bolin “over the phone.” Their marriage, she believed, would put a spotlight on Bolin’s “plight.” Despite Martinez’s tactic, Bolin was again convicted in 2012 and “received a life sentence on top of two death sentences.”^[3]

7 Convenience

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons

As Ramsland observes, in addition to raising public awareness, the wives of serial killers have provided several other reasons for marrying their murderous spouses. One of the motives such women identify is convenience. By marrying a criminal who has been sentenced to life in prison, a woman can enjoy “the perfect boyfriend,” one who thinks about her often and never strays.

She can tell her friends that she is loved while being free of “the day-to-day issues involved in such relationships,” including the mundane tasks of keeping house. At the same time, she is not accountable to him. She has the “perfect boyfriend,” and “she can keep the fantasy charged up for a long time.”^[4]

6 To Change Him

One type of woman marries a serial killer because she thinks she can change him. Such a woman believes that her intended is simply misunderstood, explains Pat Brown, author of Killing for Sport. This woman believes that her beloved is also vulnerable and has “suffered terrible abuse.”

She is the type, Brown elaborates, who willingly stands by her man, refusing to leave him, even if he beats her regularly, hopeful that, by doing so, she can eventually “save him from himself.” In marrying a serial killer, the author points out, this type of woman “is safer than the battered woman she most likely would be [if her husband wasn’t serving a life sentence] because…behind bars…he can’t knock her around.”^[5]

5 Nurture

Another component of such a woman’s seeking to change a serial killer is the fact that, by doing so, she will assume control of him. As R.J. Parker declares in Serial Killer Groupies, this type of woman believes that if she “can make him fall in love with [her, she will] ultimately gain control.”

Other women, however, are motivated by their desire to “nurture” a serial killer, Parker explains. Such women perceive the child the killer once was and desire to nurture him. This is one of the most frequent answers women give for dating such murderers. They believe that if they can somehow provide the love and care he missed out on as a boy, they can rid the killer’s “cruel and harmful nature, making him amicable again”^[6]

4 Sympathy

Tracey Bottomley of West Yorkshire, UK, was aware, she said, that her fiancé, American serial killer Ernest Otto Smith, might one day kill her, but marrying him would be worth it, she insisted, since death eventually claims us all, anyway. “I don’t mind the fact,” she made it clear, “it could be at the hands of him.” She claimed she loves Smith, whom she’d met in 2018 through a prison pen pal program.

Her sympathy for the killer seems to be the basis for her love. Her “parallel experiences with trauma and abuse,” like that which Smith suffered, bonded their relationship, writes reporter Hannah Sparks. As Bottomley herself put it, the child abuse her husband suffered as a boy “resonated with me.” Smith, a traditional fiancé, insisted on buying their wedding bands, having arranged for his son, who manages Smith’s bank accounts, to send her the funds for the purchases.^[7]

3 Sadomasochistic Passion

Their mutual passion for sadomasochism created a powerful bond between Karla Homolka and Paul Bernardo, who met at a pet convention when they were 17 and 23, respectively. Homolka, the submissive partner to the dominant Bernardo, promised in her wedding vows to “love, honor, and obey” him when they married, not as husband and wife, but as “man and wife,” a deliberate phrasing intended to indicate Bernardo’s dominant role in their marriage.

Homolka took her wedding vows seriously, agreeing not only to procure sexual victims for her husband but also to join him in kidnapping, sexually assaulting, and murdering their victims, one of whom was Homolka’s own younger sister. Finally, the couple separated in 1993, shortly before her ex-husband was identified as the Scarborough Rapist.

Following their conviction, Bernardo was sentenced to life. Thanks to a plea deal requiring her to testify against him, Homolka received a 12-year sentence with eligibility for parole after three years. She was released from prison in 2005 and now lives under an assumed name.^[8]

2 Low Self-Esteem

“An unrepentant cannibal,” Arthur Shawcross says he was inspired by the atrocities he witnessed during his stint of duty in Vietnam. The fact that he was born with an extra Y-chromosome might have added to his aggressive nature. However, this abnormality doesn’t seem to explain his belief that he was channeling both his late mother’s spirit and that “of a thirteenth-century cannibal” named Ariemes. Shawcross believed Ariemes had taken possession of his body and “drove him to rape, murder, and cannibalism.”

His deeds didn’t dissuade his long-time sweetheart, Clara Neal, whom he’d met during an adulterous liaison, from marrying him, even though Shawcross was already married at the time. Although the ceremony was a simple affair, conducted “in the prison’s visiting room,” it satisfied Neal, who described it as “nice.”

Her further comment suggests that, in addition to her love for Shawcross, her low self-esteem factored into why she’d married the cannibalistic serial killer following the death of Shawcross’s wife in 1997. “It took 10 years to make the grade, but I finally made it,” she said. She seems to have seen herself as inferior to Shawcross, as low-grade. She needed a lot of improvement, so much that it took a decade to make the grade to the extent that she would be fit enough to become his fiancée. She hadn’t been good enough for Shawcross, not, at least, according to her own measure of her value, her self-esteem.^[9]

1 Partnership, Sex, Power, and the Need to Please

Another reason women marry serial killers is to institute a partnership involving both crime and romance, or “business and pleasure,” as Dirk C. Gibson puts it in his book Serial Killers Around the World. He was referring to David and Catherine Birnie, a common-law husband and wife serial killer team. Friends—and some say—lovers since childhood, they “reunited” in 1985, Gibson notes. Catherine subsequently abandoned her husband and six children in favor of David, officially taking David’s last name as her own.

Their crimes, which included abduction, kidnapping, rape, “days of sexual assault,” and murder, were motivated almost entirely by David’s sex drive and emotional control of Catherine. She was entirely dependent on him, although they did try their hand (unsuccessfully) at safecracking on one occasion.

Gibson concludes his sketch of the killers by providing Dr. Giarrattano’s and Gibson’s own assessment of David’s motives for the murders and Catherine’s attorney’s opinion of his client’s motive. David’s motive, Giarrattano says, was “sexual” (to which Gibson adds and perhaps his need to exercise power), while Catherine’s lawyer declared that hers was her eagerness to please David.^[10]