In any known culture, murder is considered a heinous crime. This is because human life is valued more than anything else in the world. Throughout history, however, we have seen countless serial killers and mass murderers rise and spread terror. They are often seen as heartless monsters who are incapable of seeing life as sacred.

Many of these serial killers commit murders one after another because of a mental illness or pure hatred and rage. Whatever their reasons are, they still manage to keep the attention of the public on them and mark their names on history. Here are the top 10 most notorious serial killers of all time.

Warning: graphic language and gruesome pictures below.

10. THE PIOUS MONSTER

Real name: Gilles de Rais (France)
Murder count: 80 to 600

Often dubbed as the precursor to the modern serial killer, Gilles de Rais of France was a nobleman and a military captain in the army led by St. Joan of Arc. He was convicted of raping, torturing and killing dozens (or hundreds) of young children, mostly boys between six to 18. Although he preferred boys, if circumstances required, he would make do with girls.

Surviving accounts narrate how Rais would lure young boys with blond hair and blue eyes to his residences. Then, he would sexually molest, torture and mutilate the poor kids. Most of the time, he would ejaculate over the body of the dying victim. He was not alone. He had accomplices helping him set up the heads of these kids so that they could judge who among these kids was the fairest.

Most of the bodies were burnt or buried and until now, the exact number of his victims is still unknown. However, it is placed between 80 and 200. Some think that it may even be as high as 600.

9. THE KILLER CLOWN

Real name: John Wayne Gacy (Chicago, Illinois, US, 1972 – 1978)
Murder count: more than 29

We know that clowns bring fun and joy to children. Well, one clown decided to prove us wrong. He brought terror, instead. Move over, JOKER. Hehe.

John Wayne Gacy is one of the most notorious killers in the history of America. He has two jobs. By day he was a respected member of the community and a business owner who loved to entertain children as Pogo the Clown.

But at night, he was a serial murderer, cruising the streets looking for teenage boys to torture and murder. Once he had the young men at his suburban home, he would show them a magic trick using handcuffs. However, there was no magic trick. With the boys already handcuffed, he would sexually assault them all he could. Then, the brutal torture and murder followed.

For six years, the bodies of his victims stacked up in the crawlspace of his home. Due to lack of space, he was forced to throw his next victims into the Des Plaines River.

He was finally caught when he let his last victim escape after a night of horrendous torture. When the police searched his house, they found 29 bodies piled up under the patio floor and in the crawlspace. In 1980, he was sentenced to death. In 1994, he was executed.

8. THE GAY SLASHER

Real name: Andrew Phillip Cunanan (US, 1996-1997)
Murder count: 5

Andrew Cunanan murdered only five people but he was very infamous all over the world. This Filipino-American serial killer was listed on the Ten Most Wanted Fugitives of the FBI.

Cunanan always visited gay neighbourhoods in San Diego, San Francisco and Los Angeles. Many of those he met described him as articulate, intelligent and charming. He was also said to have extreme sexual tastes and sadomasochistic inclination. Most of all, he was also very handsome. And he put this asset of his to evil use.

Unlike most serial killers who pick up their victims in the streets, Cunanan eyed the rich and the famous people. Yes, he killed only five people but these people were SOME people. And he managed to kill them in a three-month cross country trip. His first victim was a former US Naval Officer, Jeffrey Trail. Architect David Madson came next. The next to meet his demise in Cunanan’s hands was Lee Miglin, a real estate developer. He then killed William Reese, a cemetery caretaker, for his truck. And his fifth and final victim — Gianni Versace, a billionaire fashion designer. Because Cunanan was reported to be working as a prostitute, the media speculated that four of his victims were actually his clients.

There was a national manhunt for Cunanan. Before being captured, however, he committed suicide in a Miami houseboat.


Andrew Cunanan after the suicide

7. THE BUTCHER OF ROSTOV

Real name: Andrei Chikatilo (Rostov, Russia, 1978 - 1990)
Murder count: 52 murders

Nicknamed “The Butcher of Rostov,” Andrei Chikatilo was a Ukranian murderer convicted of the murder of 53 children and women between 1978 and 1990. He started his killing spree when he moved to Shakhty, a small mining town, in 1978. He lured a nine-year-old to an abandoned house he had bought secretly and tried to rape her. The kid struggled and it made Chikatilo stab her to death. He ejaculated while knifing the child.

Since then, he developed an obsession to achieving sexual arousal and orgasm by stabbing and slashing children and women to death. He would approach runaways and young vagrants at railway stations and entice them to go with him. He used alcohol and money to attract adult female prostitutes and toys and candies to lure children of both sexes. Then, they would go to a forest and it would be the place for accomplishing his sinful desires. He would attempt to rape his victims but unfortunately, he would be unable to have an erection. His victims would prove to be more unfortunate as his failure to get an erection would send him to a murderous act.

He murdered nine people in 1988 and another nine in 1990. He was finally caught when he approached kids whilst under surveillance. He was found guilty of 52 murders and sentenced to death for every offence. He was put to death by firing squad on February 14, 1994. Sweet Valentine’s.

6. THE POSTER BOY OF SERIAL KILLERS

Real name: Theodore Bundy
Murder count: at least 36

In the 1970s, when people heard the word “murder,” Theodore Bundy would be the first to come to mind. Often called “The Poster Boy of Serial Killers,” Ted Bundy was indeed a poster boy. He was very handsome and intelligent. In fact, he was a consistent honour student. He was popular in school and seen as very fashionable and well-mannered. He was terribly timid. He was not known as someone that would be capable of hurting a fly.

What fuelled his drive to heinously slaughter women could be the fact that he was made to believe that his mother was an older sister and that his grandparents were his real parents. It is said that love was to blame for his rage. In college, he fell in love. He loved the woman very much that he wanted to marry her. However, the woman felt that he was not the right guy for her. A breakup followed and it changed everything in Ted’s life forever. The completely heartbroken and devastated Ted felt extreme anger against all the women in the world.

Ted went on a slaughter spree in the states of Utah, Oregon and Washington. He would strangle and mutilate his victims. Worse, he would display their heads in his apartment like pieces of art. And what would he do with the body? He would sleep with it until decomposition made it unbearable. At the age of 43, he was executed in the electric chair after confessing to 36 murders. Some claim there could have been more.



Ted Bundy after the execution

5. THE DEVIL IN THE WHITE CITY

Real name: Herman Webster Mudgett (Chicago, Illinois, US, 1887-1895)
Murder count: Unknown

Another handsome and charming monster, Herman Mudgett, more commonly known as H. H. Holmes, was a swindler. He would fool people with his various scams including cures for alcoholism, a machine producing natural gas from water and many others.

But his biggest scam took place when he killed the owner of the pharmacy he was working at and eventually claimed ownership. Now that he had capital, he built a hotel for tourists that would be visiting the White City of the famous World’s Fair. But it wasn’t just a hotel. It was a murder castle.

The three-storey building, with peculiar shapes at odd angles, contained more than 60 rooms. During the construction, Holmes kept terminating workers to keep the full design of the hotel secret. Inside, there were secret passages, trap doors, hidden stairs and many other peculiarities that he thought up.

When the Fair began, tourists kept rushing in to the hotel but they would never be seen again. They would be locked for months, monitored by Holmes using an alarm system. He killed some of them by piping natural gas through wicked gas lines into the rooms. Others were killed when Holmes turned on blowtorch devices while they were lying in bed. There were also hidden chutes for dumping the bodies into the basement, equipped with a dissecting table, vats of acid and a crematorium. In four years time, more than 50 victims were believed to have perished at the murder castle.

4. THE REAL HANNIBAL LECTER

Real name: Albert Fish (New York City, 1934)
Murder count: unknown

If you think no one can be more deranged than the fictional Silence of the Lambs character Hannibal Lecter, then you might have never heard of the man this character is based on — the notorious Albert Fish.

After posting his “Work Wanted” ad, Edward Budd was very happy that someone finally answered — Albert Fish. Budd was delighted to hear that Fish was offering him a job outside the city. Fish made several visits to Budd and his family and eventually earned their trust. One day, Fish offered to take Budd’s 10-year old sister Grace to his niece’s party and the family agreed.

There was no party.

Instead, there was a feast — a gruesome kind. Fish took the poor girl to his house in Westchester County, New York. He stripped himself naked and then strangled the girl. But it did not end there. He beheaded Grace and dismembered her using a meat cleaver. Then, he cooked her meat and other body parts into a devilish stew complete with onions and carrots. Afterwards, he indulged his taste and consumed the girl fiendishly down to the last juicy morsel.

For six years, the case was not solved until an anonymous letter came to the Budd family, saying:

“I choked her to death, then cut her in small pieces so I could take my meat to my rooms. Cook and eat it. How sweet and tender her little ass was roasted in the oven. It took me 9 days to eat her entire body.”

When traced who sent it, the investigation was pointed to an apartment unit in New York owned by Fish. He was arrested. He admitted molesting more than 400 kids in 20 years. He remains one of the oldest criminals executed in the electric chair ever.

Yes, truth is definitely stranger (and much more gruesome) than fiction.

3. THE MONSTER OF ANDES

Real name: Pedro Alonso Lopez (Peru and Ecuador, — to 1980)
Murder count: more than 300

If numbers are the only basis, Pedro Alonso Lopez is indeed THE monster. Considered one of the most murder-hungry serial killers of all time, “the monster of Andes” killed around 350 women and children. Of this number, 100 are tribal women in Peru.

Born in Tolmia, Colombia in 1949, Lopez was seventh of 13 children. When he was eight, he was caught touching his sister’s breasts by his mother and got kicked out of the house forever. Staying on the violent streets of a country in turmoil, he was picked up by a man who offered him a safe home. He went with the man but was taken to an abandoned building instead, where he was sodomised repeatedly. During the sexual assaults, he promised himself that he would do the same abuse to as many girls that he could. And to Lopez, promises must not be broken.

He went back to the streets, begging for food. An American couple noticed and took pity on him. They gave him shelter and sent him to a school for the orphans, where a teacher molested him. Because of this, he ran away again back to the violent streets where he committed all sorts of petty crimes. He was jailed when he was 18 and was gang-raped by four inmates. The rage inside him burnt more violently that he vowed never to be violated again. He killed three of the four prisoners who had raped him and spent more time in prison.

When he was released from prison in 1978, he moved to Peru and started abducting young girls. He would calm them with reassuring words all through the night. At dawn, he would rape them and strangle them as he looked at their eyes as they die. He only killed in the day time so that he could see their eyes clearly. He even had tea parties and play morbid games with the bodies of the children. The murders where only discovered when a flood revealed the bodies of the victims he buried.

When he was captured, he admitted killing more than 100 children in Peru, another 100 in Colombia and 110 in Ecuador. He also boasted that he would not hesitate to kill more if he walked the streets again. After 20 years in prison, he was brought back to the Colombian border and was released. Whatever happened to this monster is unknown.

2. THE ZODIAC

Real name: Unknown (California, 1968 – 1970)
Murder count: 6

“This is the Zodiac speaking. School children make nice targets. I think I shall wipe out a school bus some morning. Just shoot out the front tire and pick off the kiddies as they come bouncing out.”

This is part of Zodiac’s letter to the San Francisco Chronicle during the height of his killings. Even before the recent Hollywood blockbuster, “Zodiac” had always been synonymous with murder. This is the pen name that a mysterious serial killer wanted to use. This cold-blooded murderer killed only six people but he created such a fuzz in the late 1960s because he always contacted the media and taunted the authorities for with their failure to find him.

Victims were usually couples in isolated areas but there was one couple who were attacked in broad daylight. His weapons varied ranging from knives to pistols. A survivor described Zodiac as someone wearing a black executioner’s hood and a zodiac-signed (circled cross) bib on the front.

Zodiac was fond of sending out letters to newspapers. These letters contained cryptograms, some of which are still not deciphered to this day. In these letters, the Zodiac claimed unsolved murders, gave away clues to the case and promised more bloodshed.

In December 1969, he was almost captured but he successfully made a getaway. Months and years have passed and the Zodiac continued sending letters to the press and then suddenly, it stopped. Until now, after almost four decades, the identity of the Zodiac remains a mystery.

1. JACK THE RIPPER

Real name: Unknown (London, England, 1888)
Murder count: at least 5

Although his identity is not known to this day, Jack the Ripper is the most well-known serial killer in history. Mentioned in countless books and motion pictures and known in all parts of the world, Jack is indeed a legend. In fact, the Ripper is not just infamous; he is famous, too. He has developed a number of followings all over the globe. (Myself included, hehe.)

The Ripper was active in the highly impoverished Whitechapel area in London in 1888. He killed at least five women, all making a living as casual prostitutes. Some claim that he may have murdered up to nine. Aside from the fact that the police failed to discover his identity, what makes Jack very notorious was that he committed his murders in a gruesome manner IN PUBLIC PLACES. He would cut the throat of the victim and mutilate the body. Some of the victims were strangled so that they could be silenced. He would also remove the internal organs from the body of some victims, which made the officials think that the killer possessed surgical or anatomical knowledge.

Despite the many suspicions and accusations, no one was ever arrested for these murders. One hundred and twenty years later, Jack’s identity is still a mystery. That’s mah man. Haha.

Serial killings are usually a product of a mental illness. These people feel their insatiable urge to kill because killing make them feel alive. Yes, the world may not be a very good place to live in for some people. However, whatever reason these serial killers had, it is surely not a reason to kill innocent souls. You can’t just make this world an awful place to live in for everyone just because it has been awful to you.

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