Celebrity

In 1861, Herman Webster Mudgett was born in New Hampshire. It is said that at an early age he was fascinated with skeletons and soon became obsessed with death. It may have been this interest that led him to pursue medicine. After graduating high school at 16, Mudgett changed his name to Henry Howard Holmes, and later in life would be known as H.H. Holmes. Holmes studied medicine at a small school in Vermont before being accepted into the University of Michigan Medical School. While enrolled in

Hadj Mohammed Mesfewi was a Moroccan serial killer who was found to have killed at least 36 women. He was a cobbler and public letter writer. The bodies of 26 women were found under his shop and an additional ten were found buried on property owned by Mesfewi. He was aided by a 70-year-old female accomplice named Rahali, also reported as Annah, during the course of the murders. They would lure young women to dinner, administer a narcotic, and then murder them in their sleep. The victims were the

Gwendolyn Graham, born August 6th, 1964, is an American serial killer. Graham was a nursing aide in Michigan’s Alpine Manor. Cathy Wood, who also worked at the nursing home, befriended Graham, in 1986. Soon after, they became lovers. In the relationship, Graham was dominant over Wood, in all ways. However, Wood was not innocent. Together, the two created a terrible plan, based in their love. They would murder people whose initials would spell “murder.” They soon abandoned the spelling plan, but

In 1928, southern California was booming. Agriculture and the movie industry had transformed this area into a lively metropolis. However a string of child abductions and murders in the small town of Wineville changed the views of the city. A man named Gordon Stewart Northcott kidnapped, sexually abused and murdered at least three, and possibly up to as many as twenty, young boys. It is believed that he had the help of his mother and his Canadian nephew to commit these crimes. On March 10, 192

Gennady Mikhasevich does not fit the profile of the typical serial killer. He lived a relatively normal life, even after he began killing. Born in 1947, he spent time serving in the Soviet army, married and had two children, and was an active participant in the Communist Party and other volunteer organizations. The turning point, if Mikhasevich is to be believed, was after he left the army and returned home to find his girlfriend at the time had left him and remarried. He was planning on killing

Genene Ann Jones, born July 13th, 1950, is a female serial killer who worked as a pediatric nurse in Texas. She killed an unknown number of children (estimates suggest 46 at the highest) via poison. She is also known as an “Angel of Death” for her style of killing. Jones would inject digoxin, heparin, and other drugs to create a medical situation in a patient. She had meant to revive them, but many children did not survive the damage inflicted initially by the poisons. Jones aroused suspicion in

Gary Leon Ridgway is famous for being the serial killer who has admitted to more murders than anyone else. He is linked to the deaths of 48 young women, most of who were strangled to death around the Seattle and Tacoma, Washington areas. It took nearly 20 years for Ridgway to be caught and brought to justice. He committed the majority of his murders between 1982 and 1983, during which time the bodies of many of his victims were found near Green River in Washington. This earned the then unknown a

One of the most infamous vampire related mass murderers was Fritz Haarmann (1879-1925), who with his two accomplices was responsible for the deaths of at least twenty and as many as fifty young men. He was known as a vampire because of his cannibalism and habit of biting his victims in the throat. Born to a working-class couple in Hanover, Germany, Fritz was a sullen and slow-witted child whose favorite pastime was dressing up like a girl. At 17, he was committed to an asylum after being arreste

Francisco Antonio Laureana was an Argentine serial killer who raped and murdered 13 women in a six-month period from 1974 to 1975. He would strangle his victims and occasionally shoot them with a handgun. He was killed in a shootout with police on February 27, 1975. A composite sketch had been made of him by a man he had shot at after fleeing from a murder. Laureana was married and had three children.

Little is known of Enriqueta Martí i Ripollés before she arrived in Barcelona in the early years of the 19th Century. What is known is that she did not arrive alone. She brought with her a brutal penchant for survival and an equally fierce desire to rise above a poverty that she would soon sadistically twist to her advantage. She preyed on young children from Barcelona’s destitute Raval Quarter. She would prostitute them to the pedophiles and deviants who had for so long protected and frequented

Known as South Africa's "Axe Killer", Elifasi Msomi, was hanged in Pretoria in January 1956 after being convicted of hacking 15 people to death. Msomi blamed his victims' deaths on the "tokoloshe" which, he said, would appear on his shoulder and order him to kill. He killed mostly in the Unkomaas and Umzimkuku valleys in Natal. Posing as a doctor, Elifasi charmed his victims into willingly going off with him. A Zulu man, Msomi was an unsuccessful young sangoma (shaman). Seeking professional a

Elias Xitavhudzi murdered 16 women and men in Sunnyside and Magnolia Dale (Gauteng Province) in the 1960’s. As he murdered only white males and females in the strictly isolated “apartheid-era”, his murderous reign caused communal concern on both sides of the race spectrum. Waiting for his victims at various “lovers-lane” spots, he would accost the unsuspecting couple and brutally murder them. Shortly before his arrest, he acquired the nickname “Pangaman” (panga being a local word for the machete

Dorothea Puente was a convicted serial killer who ran a boarding house in Sacramento, California in the 1980s. Puente cashed in the Social Security checks of the elderly and disabled boarders living in her house. Many of them ended up dead and buried in the boarding house’s yard. In April 1982, Puente’s friend and business partner, Ruth Monroe, began to rent out a space in an apartment she owned. Shortly after moving in, Monroe died from an overdose of codeine and Tylenol. When she was questione

On May 15, 1998, Donato Bilancia, confessed to a string of slayings in the Italian Riviera, saying he was mentally ill, suddenly flipped and could not explain his 90-day long serial killing spree. He spent seven hours through the night smoking and confessing to the magistrate in charge of his case to the tune of 18 murders, 15 of them since October. "He expressly asked for treatment because he is not able to realise what he has done. He cannot explain to himself what happened: something suddenly

On March 13, 1933, Donald Gaskins was born in Florence County, South Carolina. At a young age, Gaskins was teased and given the nickname “Pee Wee” as a result of his small body frame. Violence and ridicule followed him from his home where his stepfather beat him to his school where he fought with the other kids daily. This would ultimately lead to him becoming the most prolific serial killer in South Carolina. At age 11, Gaskins quit school and began working on cars at a local garage. While w

Dennis Lynn Rader, born on March 9th, 1945, was the BTK Killer. The letters “BTK” stood for “bind, torture, and kill.” Rader was an active serial killer in Wichita, Kansas, between 1974 and 1991. During his youth, Rader hanged cats, reportedly. However, other than that, he led a normal life, joining the Air Force and marrying a woman named Paula. He even had children. In 1974, he would begin work for ADT Security Services. This year also marked the first of Rader’s murders. He killed the Oter

Dennis Nilsen was born November 23, 1945 in Fraserburgh, Scotland. Though Nilsen recognized his homosexual desires, he was never comfortable with them and began acting on them through murder and dismemberment. Nilsen's first victim was in 1978, he went on to kill, upon his confession, twelve young men and dissect their bodies. Dennis Nilsen killed, defiled and dismembered 15 young men between December 1978 and February 1983, practically under the noses of his neighbors. When police finally arres

Madame Delphine LaLaurie, a wealthy society woman of New Orleans, is most famous for the torture and murder of her slaves. LaLaurie was born around 1775. Her family moved from Ireland to New Orleans. She married her first time in 1800, a Spanish officer. LaLaurie gave birth to daughter Marie en-route. Her husband died before they reached Madrid. Back in New Orleans, LaLaurie married a banker and had four more children with him. Her second husband died eight years after they got married. Finally,

Dean Corll was a 33-year-old electrician living in Houston, Texas, who with two teen accomplices was responsible for kidnapping, torturing, raping and murdering at least 27 young boys in Houston in the early 1970s. The Houston Mass Murders, as the case was later called, became one of the most horrific series of murders in U.S. history. He was born in Fort Wayne, Indiana, to Mary Robinson and Arnold Corll. After his parents divorced, Dean and his brother Stanley moved with their mother to Houston

David Thabo Simelane was born in Swaziland in 1956 and grew up in Ngcoseni. He is a Swazi serial killer who caused havoc from the late 1990s until late 2001. His murder spree began in 1997, around the time he was released from prison for a prior conviction of rape. It was one of the many times, about 18, since 1976 that he had been convicted of robbery and rape. The last conviction was significant because he would later claim that he had robbed the woman but he had never raped her. For him, the

David Berkowitz, also known as Son of Sam and the .44 Caliber Killer, is an American serial killer who terrorized the New York City area from July 1976 to July 1977. Berkowitz killed six people and wounded seven, most using a .44 caliber Bulldog revolver gun. Berkowitz was born Richard David Falco on June 1, 1953 in Brooklyn, New York. His unmarried parents separated shortly before he was born, and he was placed on adoption. His adoptive parents switched his first and middle names, and gave him

Christopher Mhlengwa Zikode is a South African rapist and serial killer who was convicted in 1995 on 8 counts of murder, 5 counts of rape, 5 counts of attempted murder and 2 counts of indecent assault. Zikode is however considered responsible for at least 18 murders and 11 attempted murders. Known as the "Donnybrook Serial Killer," Zikode murdered 18 people and attempted to murder another 11 over a period of two years in the rural Natal midlands town of Donnybrook in South Africa. All his victim

Chester D. Turner is no stranger to murder or the punishment that comes with it. He squeezed the life out of more than a dozen women during a decade of terror, and two juries decided he should die for his crimes. So it was merely a formality Friday that Turner, already on death row for 10 murders, was given four more death sentences for what a prosecutor called the city's most prolific serial killing. Turner, 47, looked straight at Judge Robert Perry as he handed down the penalty for the string

Charles Sobhraj was a famous serial killer in the 1970's, known for drugging and killing between 12 and 24 western tourists in Asia. His several successful escapes from prison coined him the nickname, "The Serpent." Known for a string of killings in Vietnam in the 1970's. Born to an Indian father and Vietnamese mother, he spent most of his childhood on the rough streets of Saigon. He befriended mostly western tourists in Asia, later drugging and killing them. Between 1972 and 1976, it is specula

Charles Ray Hatcher also known as "Crazy Charlie, A one-man crime wave, and Mr. Prince;" was born in the small town of Mount City, Missouri at 4:00 p.m. He was the youngest sibling having three older brothers; Arthur Allen Hatcher, Jesse Hatcher Jr., and Floyd Hatcher. His parents where Jesse and Lula Hatcher. Charles did have trauma in his childhood. At the young age of six years old he watched his oldest brother Arthur die of electrocution while they were flying a kite. His mother left the hom

Charles Manson is an American cult leader whose followers carried out several notorious murders in the late 1960s and inspired the book Helter Skelter. Born in Ohio in 1934, Charles Manson is notoriously connected to the brutal slayings of actress Sharon Tate and other Hollywood residents, but he was never actually found guilty of committing the murders himself. However, the famous 'Tate-La Bianca' killings have immortalized him as a living embodiment of evil. Images of his staring 'mad eyes' ar

On July 10, 1942 the first of five brutal murders and rapes began with the 20 year old red-haired wife of a man named William Brown. Charles Floyd entered the Brown’s home and strangled his wife to death before brutalizing her body. She was pregnant at the time so police ruled the murder as a double homicide. Six months later Georgina Green and her happily married daughter were alone in their home when Floyd broke in. He bludgeoned both of them to death. They were both redheads, which helped pol