List of serial killers

This is a list of serial killers arranged by their country of origin or activity.

Convicted serial killers by country

Australia

• Eric Edgar Cooke
• Paul Denyer - known as the "Frankston Serial Killer"
• Peter Dupas
• John Wayne Glover - known as the "North Shore Granny Killer"; found dead in his cell in 2005
• Eddie Leonski - the "Brownout Murderer"; killed at least 4
• William MacDonald
• Ivan Milat - the "backpack-murderer"; killed at least 7 tourists
• Christopher Worrell - the Truro murders; killed 7 victims
• James Milller - the Truro murders; convicted of killing 6 victims
• John Travers
• John Whelan

Austria

• Jack Unterweger - author and sexual sadist; allegedly killed 12 women

Belgium

• Marie Becker
• Marc Dutroux - Belgian child molester and killer
• Michel Fourniret

Canada

• Paul Bernardo - killed three teenaged girls (including his wife's sister), with his wife Karla Homolka, and was also known as the Scarborough Rapist
• Allan Legere - the "Monster of Miramichi"; killer of 5 individuals
• Earle Nelson
• Clifford Olson - murdered eleven children
• Peter Woodcock - murdered three children in 1956 and 1957, and a fellow psychiatric institute patient in 1991

China

• Hu Wanlin - self-proclaimed doctor who is believed to have killed between 100 and 190 patients
• Yang Xinhai

Colombia

• Luis Garavito (also killed victims in Ecuador)
• Pedro Lopez - The Monster of the Andes; apocryphal with 300 alleged victims (also killed victims in Ecuador)

Ecuador

• Daniel Barbosa - The Beast Of The Andes; apocryphal, with 71 alleged victims
• Luis Garavito (also killed victims in Colombia)
• Pedro Lopez (also killed victims in Colombia)

France

• Michel Fourniret
• Hélène Jegado - domestic servant who poisoned at least 23 people between 1833 and 1851
• Henri Désiré Landru
• Émile Louis - preyed on young handicapped women
• Marcel Petiot - doctor who killed 63 would-be refugees from the Nazis
• Gilles de Rais - French demonolator and child-killer (d. 1440)
• Joseph Vacher - 19th century serial killer of 11 individuals

Germany

• Jürgen Bartsch
• Karl Denke - cannibal
• Karl Grossmann - killed women and sold their flesh on the black market
• Fritz Haarmann - similar to Grossman, but preyed on boys
• Fritz Honka - killed women in Hamburg and kept the bodies in his apartment
• Joachim Kroll - claimed thirteen victims over three decades
• Peter Kürten - the Vampire of Düsseldorf
• Peter Stumpp - self-proclaimed werewolf who killed 16 people during the 1500s
• Anna Maria Zwanziger - Bavarian serial killer

Hungary

• Erzsébet Báthory - countess who killed servant girls
• Béla Kiss - escaped justice in the confusion of World War I
• Sylvestre Matuschka - the 'train killer'; derailed trains for sexual gratification

India

• Charles Sobhraj - preyed on Western tourists in Southeast Asia in the 1970s
• Thug Behram - leader of a gang of Thugs in Avadh, India, who confessed to participating in 931 individual murders and to having personally strangled approximately 125 men
• Auto Shankar - Indian auto rickshaw driver who preyed on teenage girls

Indonesia

• Ahmad Suradji - a serial killer who admitted to killing 42 women

Iran

• Mohammed Bijeh - known as the "Tehran Desert Vampire"; killed at least 16 young boys near Tehran, Iran
• Said Hanai - killed at least 16 women around Mashhad, Iran

Italy

• Luigi Chiatti - both of his victims were children
• Roberto Succo

Japan

• Tsutomu Miyazaki - aka "The Otaku Murderer", "The Little Girl Murderer", and "Dracula", he killed 4 preschool-age Japanese girls and ate two of them

Kazakhstan

• Nikolai Dzhumagaliev - cannibal and rapist known as "Metal Fang"; thought to have killed nearly 50 individuals

Mexico

• Abdul Latif Sharif - Egyptian alleged to be responsible for dozens of murders in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico

Netherlands

• Maria Swanenburg - killed 27 with arsenic in the 1880s

Pakistan

• Javed Iqbal - killed 100 boys in Pakistan

Poland

• Julian Koltun
• Zdzislaw Marchwicki
• Władysław Mazurkiewicz - killed up to 30 women
• Stanislaw Modzieliewski
• Lucian Staniak - dubbed "The Red Spider" and "The Red Ripper"; killed 6 to 20 women
• Leszek Pękalski - killed up to 17 women

South Africa

• Daisy de Melker - poisoner
• Moses Sithole - believed to have killed at least 38 young women

South Korea

• Yoo Young-Chul - killed and ate about 20 people, mainly rich elderly men and prostitutes

Soviet Union

• Andrei Chikatilo - AKA "The Rostov Ripper" and "Hannibal Lecter", a name given to him by the Russian public after the character in the popular American film Silence of the Lambs, which came out around the time of his arrest; killed 52 women and children throughout the many countries of the former Soviet Union before being arrested, convicted, and executed in 1994

Sweden

• Thomas Quick
• Ulf Olsson - Convicted of two murders, suspected for at least two more.
• Mattias Flink
• John Ausonius

UK

• Beverley Allitt - an Angel of Death; Paediatric nurse who killed four patients and injured at least nine others, convicted in 1991
• Robert Black - schoolgirl killer
• Ian Brady and Myra Hindley - the Moors Murderers
• George Chapman - real name Severin Antoniovich Klosowski, poisoned three women, but suspected of being Jack the Ripper
• John Childs - burned the bodies of his six victims, jailed 1980
• John Christie - the necrophile, who lived at 10 Rillington Place
• Mary Ann Cotton - British Victorian killer, said to have taken more than 20 victims
• Thomas Neill Cream - the Lambeth Poisoner, began his killing spree in the US then moved to London
• Bruce George Peter Lee - born Peter George Dinsdale, the prolific Hull arsonist
• Kenneth Erskine - the Stockwell Strangler, jailed in 1988 for murdering seven pensioners
• John George Haigh - the Acid Bath Murderer or Vampire of London
• Anthony Hardy - the Camden Ripper
• Colin Ireland - the Gay Slayer or Fairy Liquidator
• Michael Lupo - the Wolf Man, originally from Italy
• Patrick Mackay - confessed to killing 11 people
• Robert Mawdsley - serial killer of four; killed three in prison and dubbed Hannibal the Cannibal
• Peter Moore - businessman who killed men at random in Wales
• Dennis Nilsen - British serial killer of 15 (possibly 16)
• William Palmer - the Rugeley poisoner
• Mark Rowntree - 19 year old psychopath who killed 4 people at random
• Harold Shipman AKA "Dr Death" - British doctor convicted of 15 murders; a later inquiry stated he had killed at least 215 and possibly up to 457 people over a 25 year period
• George Joseph Smith - the "Brides in the Bath" killer
• John Straffen - child-killer and Britain's longest serving prisoner (some doubt exists over his conviction)
• Peter Sutcliffe - the Yorkshire Ripper
• Fred West and Rosemary West - the House of Horrors murderers in Gloucester
• Graham Frederick Young - the Teacup Poisoner, who killed three (1947-1990)

Northern Ireland (UK)

• Lenny Murphy - leader of the Shankill Butchers
• William Moore - second-in-command of the Shankill Butchers

Ukraine

• Anatoly Onoprienko - Ukrainian serial killer known as "the Terminator"; murdered 52 people from 1989 until his capture in 1996

USA

• Charles Albright - killer of three; known for surgically removing the eyes of victims
• Richard Angelo - nurse.
• Joe Ball - killed at least 20 women in the early 20th century in Texas
• David Berkowitz - known as the Son of Sam
• Bloody Benders - a family who killed guests of their inn in Labette County, Kansas, in 1872
• The Boston Strangler - allegedly Albert DeSalvo, though disputed
• William Bonin - with several accomplices, claimed the lives of twenty boys in California
• Jerry Brudos - killed at least 5 women and was sexually aroused by their feet
• Ted Bundy - law student who raped and murdered over 30 women in several states
• Richard Chase - The Vampire of Sacramento murdered six people in the '70s
• Dean Corll - committed the Houston Mass Murders with Elmer Wayne Henley and David Brooks
• Juan Corona - Mexican immigrant who killed 25 people in the space of just six weeks
• Charles Cullen - nurse in New Jersey and Pennsylvania who killed as many as 40 patients through lethal injection
• Jeffrey Dahmer - Milwaukee cannibal who kept heads, skulls and body parts in his apartment
• Westley Allan Dodd - child molester and killer of 3 young boys in Seattle, Washington; hanged on January 5, 1993
• Albert Fish - sadist and pedophile who cannibalised a 12-year-old girl
• John Wayne Gacy - the Killer Clown who kept bodies buried under his Chicago home
• Ed Gein - elements of Gein's life and crimes have inspired, at least in part The Silence of the Lambs and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
• Kristen Gilbert - original Angel of Death serial killer, convicted of killing 4 by injection of epinephrine while working as a nurse
• Harvey Murray Glatman - Californian rapist and killer of three women; lured women to pose for "bondage photographs" and would rape and murder them.
• Belle Gunness - murder-for-profit killer who murdered her suitors and her own children.
• Donald Harvey - hospital orderly, confessed to more than 80 "mercy killings" with 37 confirmed killings
• Gary M. Heidnik - serial killer from the Philadelphia area
• "Wild Bill" Hickman - killed in the name of religion (many of his alleged exploits are disputed)
• Hillside Strangler - actually two men, Kenneth Bianchi and Angelo Buono, Jr.
• Philip Carl Jablonski, killed at least 4 women in Utah, carved the word "Jesus" into one
• H. H. Holmes (real name Herman Mudgett) - active 1890-1894 during Chicago's 1893 World's Columbian Exposition
• Genene Jones - Texas pediatric nurse who poisoned infants in her care
• Patrick Kearney - necrophile who butchered 28 men in California
• Edmund Kemper - started killing when he was aged fifteen
• Sante Kimes - grifter and murder-for-profit killer who, along with her son Kenneth Kimes, is believed to have killed upwards of 4 people
• Paul John Knowles - raped and murdered 18 people
• Randy Steven Kraft - murdered as many as 68 young men in California
• Leonard Lake and Charles Ng - ex-marines and survivalists who collected female slaves
• Derrick Todd Lee - aka the "Baton Rouge Serial Killer"
• Eddie Leonski - the Brownout Strangler
• Henry Lee Lucas - confessed to hundreds of murders, although most confessions were false
• John Allen Muhammed - Washington D.C. area sniper
• Herbert Mullin - schizophrenic who killed people to prevent earthquakes
• Earle Nelson - necrophiliac serial killer dubbed "Gorilla Man"
• Carl Panzram - murderer, rapist, arsonist
• Jesse Pomeroy - teenaged psychopath who killed two children
• Dorothea Puente - killed and robbed nine elderly people
• Dennis Rader - killed ten people over 20 years as the "BTK Killer"
• Richard Ramirez - the 'Night Stalker' who terrorized Los Angeles in 1984 and 1985
• Angel Maturino Resendiz - killed nine people in Texas, Kentucky, and Illinois
• Gary Ridgway - admitted to being The Green River Killer
• Joel Rifkin - murdered 17 women in the New York City and Long Island area
• John Edward Robinson - so-called 'Cyber Sex Killer' who lured victims through the internet
• Danny Rolling - pleaded guilty to butchering five students in Florida
• Efren Saldivar - respiratory therapist who definitely killed six patients, and possibly as many as 120
• Arthur Shawcross - the Genesee River Killer
• Gerard John Schaefer - policeman from Florida who killed up to thirty-four women and girls
• Cary Stayner - "Yosemite Murderer" who killed four women
• William Suff - "Riverside Killer" who killed up to 19 women near Riverside, California
• Ottis Toole - Henry Lee Lucas's accomplice; convicted of six murders in Florida
• Coral Eugene Watts - killed dozens of women in Texas and Michigan
• Wayne Williams - convicted of the Atlanta Child Murders (disputed)
• Randall Woodfield - the "I-5 killer"
• Aileen Wuornos - rare female serial killer who shot dead six men in Florida
• Andrew Minotti - bus driver in cities in texas, involved in killing children

Unidentified serial killers

• The Axeman of New Orleans (USA)
• The Austin Axe Murderer, AKA the Servant Girl Annihilator (USA)
• Bible John (UK)
• The Cleveland Torso Murderer, AKA "The Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run" (USA)
• Jack the Ripper, the most famous serial killer of all, murdered prostitutes in the East End of London in 1888 (UK)
• Jack the Stripper (UK)
• The Original Night Stalker (USA)
• The Zodiac Killer (USA)

See also

• List of terrorist incidents (includes Unabomber, Theodore Kaczynski)
• Mass murderer
• List of criminals by nickname
• Spree killer