Photo Source: PEXELS.com

True crime has grown in popularity in recent years, and readers are more interested than ever in serial killers. All over the globe, serial killers prey on innocent victims.

This list is ranked not by the number of confirmed kills, but by the violence, horror, and resulting infamy of the crimes committed. It is also not meant to glorify serial killers, but to highlight those in the last two hundred years who have been “most notable”- and the killer at #1 will send a chill down your spine. Let’s begin. 

10. Aileen Wuornos (United States)

“Damsel of Death”/ “The Highway Hooker”

6 confirmed victims

Aileen Wuornos had a disturbed, unstable childhood. Her parents had her when her mother was only 14, and her father was only 18. Her father was convicted of raping and murdering a seven-year-old when Wuornos was only 11. Her father ran off when she was a child, and her mother became a violent alcoholic. Wuronos and her brother were adopted by their mother’s parents, who were also violent alcoholics. She was sexually assaulted by both her grandfather and a family friend, who later got her pregnant. She gave birth in 1971 at 14, and a few months later her grandfather threw her out of the house. 

She made a living for many years as a prostitute and eventually began committing crimes. She attempted suicide six times between the ages of 14 and 22. After being married named Lewis Fell for a short period of time, Wuornos got divorced and was once again on her own. Wuornos met a woman named Tyria Moore, who she lived with for several years. In between prostitution and many other misdemeanors, Wuronos began killing. She killed six to seven men between the ages of 40 and 55, all of them motorists. She was charged with six murders, but the body of the seventh man was never found. All of the men were potential clients she lured into secluded areas. She killed all of them with a shotgun.  She was sentenced to death in 1992 and proceeded to spend ten years on death row. Before she died, she swore to onlookers that she would be back.

9. Rodney Alcala (United States)

“The Dating Game Killer”

7 confirmed victims

Rodney Alcala was a charming young man on the outside, and a demon on the inside. Born in San Antonio, Texas in 1943, Alcala was abandoned by his father and left to take care of his mother and two sisters. As a young man, he was a dedicated student who later joined the army. After many incidents in which he assaulted women and went AWOL, Alcala left the military. Military psychiatrists diagnosed him with Narcissistic Personality Disorder and Borderline Personality Disorder. 

Alcala is most famous, however, for being on a popular 70s network show called “The Dating Game” in which multiple men are interviewed by a woman to see which one she selects. Alcala killed at least five people from 1977-1979, and appeared on the show in 1978. He has inconclusively been linked to eight murders, but police believe there may be many more. Alcala strangled most of his victims and took photos of their bodies, and most of his victims were women in their early twenties. Almost all women were raped and tied up before they were killed. Alcala reportedly had a high IQ and was very intelligent- but he still wasn’t smart enough to let a lawyer represent him, or to take a plea bargain. He published an infamous book titled You, The Jury in 1994 which received awful reviews. In the book, Alcala discusses his case in detail. He died in prison on July 24th, 2021.

8. Edmund Kemper (United States)

“The Co-Ed Killer”

8 confirmed victims

Like most serial killers, Kemper had a difficult childhood. From a young age, his mother gave him very little attention. She thought that showing her son affection would turn him soft and emotional. Things worsened when his parents separated and his father moved to California. Kemper was awkward; he didn’t make friends easily and was often jealous. At the age of 13 Kemper killed the family cat because he felt it loved his sister more than him. He then mounted its head on a spike and kept pieces of it in his closet. 

As he grew older, he moved in with his paternal grandparents after problems with both his mother’s and father’s households. At 15, he started hunting with a rifle that his grandfather gave him. When his grandmother began to scold him, he shot her in the back and head, before stabbing her multiple times with a kitchen knife. He then went out to the driveway and shot his grandfather, who had just returned from the grocery store. At 21, he was released from prison on parole and sent to live with his mother, against the advice of prison psychiatrists. Over the next few years, he killed at least four people, most of them female hitchhikers around 18 years old. After killing, raping and strangling hitchhikers started to bore him; Kemper then murdered his mother in her sleep. After hiding the body, he invited over his mother’s best friend and killed her too. Kemper then drove 1000 miles away from home, but later confessed to multiple murders over the phone to police. Kemper is still alive today and has been interviewed for many documentaries.

7. Mary Ann Cotton (United Kingdom)

“The Dark Angel” or “Lady Rotten”

21 Confirmed Victims

Mary Ann Cotton was a soft-spoken housewife and mother. However, she killed at least 21 people throughout her life. Often considered to be Britain’s most heinous female serial killer, Cotton routinely took out life insurance policies on family members and friends, naming herself as the sole beneficiary. She enjoyed being a single woman and having control over her own life, but she needed to financially sustain herself. So Cotton, being a violent woman, would slowly poison them with arsenic. She appeared to be a loving mother who had bad luck, her children and husbands always getting sick. However, she was slowly and brutally murdering them and collecting after they died. She was hanged in 1873 for the murder of her stepson. All in all, she killed three of her four husbands, 11 of her own children, and several others who got in her way.

6. John Wayne Gacy (United States)

“The Killer Clown”

33 confirmed victims

A stout, jolly man who was an active member of his community was the last person anyone expected to be a brutal serial killer. John Wayne Gacy, who worked both as a politician and business owner, killed at least 33 young men and boys in the 1980s. Perhaps most famous for his terrifying costumes, Gacy is regarded as one of the reasons we find clowns so unnerving. His alter ego was “Pogo the Clown” and he would perform at children’s birthday parties. Though he served several years in prison on various sexual and assault charges, Gacy managed to keep up the facade that he was an easygoing family man. Gacy primarily preyed on young men who worked for him- he owned a local construction company that employed many young laborers. Over thirty bodies were found in the crawlspace under Gacy’s porch when police finally caught onto his trail. Gacy was executed in 1994, but the artwork he made in prison still is being sold for millions.

5. Ted Kaczynski (United States)

“The Unabomber”

3 Confirmed Victims

Born in the countryside, Theodore Kaczynski was considered to be a relatively normal boy. However, he suffered many injuries as a child and was often stuck inside. At a young age, his parents and teachers also discovered that he was a mathematics prodigy with a high IQ. He was immediately taken out of regular school to focus on math. This damaged Kaczynski socially, leading him to drop out of university and live a life alone in Montana, with little social contact. He developed the philosophy that all modern technology would destroy the world. Out of some deranged sense of deliverance, Kaczynski began building bombs with the training he received at university. Kaczynski sent several bombs to colleges and airports, typically in ornate-looking gift boxes. All in all, the Unabomber killed three people, and wounded many others with the massive explosions his bombs caused. A famous moment from his reign of terror over the country was when he delivered a bomb to a video game store while wearing a hooded sweatshirt. A witness later described him by his outfit to a police sketch artist, who drew a photo of Kaczynski. The photo appeared on news programs and in newspapers all over the country. The truly scary thing about the Unabomber is that the photo was ordinary- meaning that the notorious serial killer could have been anyone before he was apprehended. He died in prison on June 10, 2023. 

4. Ted Bundy (United States)

“The Lady Killer”

25 confirmed victims

Perhaps one of the most famous killers on this list, Ted Bundy was a seemingly charming young man. Perhaps most famous for his televised trial and hordes of young fans, Bundy charmed his way through the judicial system. With several movies based on his killing spree and trial, Bundy confessed to 36 murders, with only around 20 being proven. Bundy was born to his mother Louise, who was unmarried, in 1946. He was raised by his grandparents and told that his mother was his sister. He was violent at a young age, playing with knives and arguing with other children. Bundy later went to law school and had a girlfriend by the name of Diane Edwards. When their relationship ended, Bundy was heartbroken. Most of his later victims actually resemble Edwards- almost all of them were young, attractive students with long brown hair. Many women went missing in the next several years in the Seattle area, where Bundy lived with his next girlfriend, Elizabeth Kloepfer. In most of the murders that he committed, Bundy admits to luring his victims near his car, by saying he was injured or needed help. He then raped his victims and beat them to death, typically with a meat cleaver. Kloepfer noticed his strange habits over their six-year relationship and reported him to the police to no avail. In 1974, Bundy left Kloepfer and went back to law school in Utah, where young women, mostly students, began to go missing.

He was eventually arrested for kidnapping a woman and sentenced to up to 15 years in prison, but he escaped custody twice in 1977. After his second escape, he broke into a sorority house in Florida and killed two women. Less than a month later, he killed a 12-year-old girl named Kimberly Leach. He was then captured by authorities and sent to trial. His good looks and charming personality gained him tons of notoriety and even fans. He received two life sentences and spent nine years on death row, trying to appeal his sentence. However, DNA evidence from bite marks on victims from the Florida sorority house linked him to several crimes. In 1980, he received a third life sentence for the last murder he reportedly ever committed. Bundy was executed in 1989 by an electric chair for the murders of Lisa Levy, Margaret Bowman, and 12-year-old Kimberly Leach.

3. Harold Shipman (United Kingdom)

“Dr. Death”

15 confirmed victims

Harold Frederick Shipman was born in 1946 in Nottingham, England. He was a relatively normal child, but at seventeen his mother died of lung cancer. He observed them giving her large quantities of morphine to deal with her pain- perhaps this is where his obsession with death and strong drugs began. Shipman went on to become a doctor and got in trouble many times with the law for malpractice and writing prescriptions illegally. He was addicted to opiates and would frequently write himself prescriptions. After a short stay in rehab, he went back to practicing medicine, and several of his patients were found dead in their homes shortly after his visits. In one case, a healthy 81-year-old woman was found dead shortly after a visit from Shipman. She had previously been very healthy, according to friends and family. In her will, however, she left around 400,000 British pounds worth of property to Shipman. It was later found that he forged the will himself. He would not let authorities perform an autopsy to determine the cause of death. Many of Shipman’s patients died over the years, primarily from receiving lethal doses of painkillers. Shipman is estimated to have killed over 200 people, though only 15 cases were confirmed. It is thought by psychiatrists that Shipman liked the power he had over others, and being able to decide if they lived or died. Others say it was his way of dealing with his mother’s painful and slow death. He committed suicide in 2000 after being convicted of 15 murders in court and sentenced to life in prison.

2. Jeffrey Dahmer (United States)

“The Milwaukee Monster”

17 confirmed victims

Jeffery Dahmer didn’t initially fit the mold of a typical serial killer. Born in Milwaukee in 1960, Dahmer had a relatively normal family- aside from his mother, who had manic depression and attempted suicide on at least one occasion. Psychologists argue that this is where his obsession with death began. As a child, Dahmer would kill small animals and pick apart their skeletons, later bleaching and putting the bones back together. Dahmer displayed signs of major alcoholism throughout his high school years and afterward joined the army. Shortly after graduating, he murdered a young hitchhiker by the name of Steven Hicks, whose body wasn’t found for almost a decade. Dahmer was honorably discharged from the army after two years, after being deemed unfit to serve. After the army, Dahmer got a job and started living with his grandmother, during which time he went through a series of odd jobs and started to kill men from gay bars and clubs around the city. In the 1990, however, things got worse. Dahmer got his own apartment and began experimenting with how he would kill his victims- and then he started eating their organs. Dahmer was finally arrested in 1991 where he confessed to a grand total of seventeen victims. Multiple skeletons and human hearts were found in Dahmer’s apartment, along with a barrel of acid in which there were multiple decomposing bodies. Dahmer was murdered by a fellow inmate in prison on November 28th, 1994.

1. Luis Garavito (Colombia)

“The Beast”

147 confirmed victims

Though many people haven’t heard of him, Luis Garavito is one of the most brutal serial killers of all time. Nicknamed “The Beast ”, with over 147 victims, he earns the number one spot on this list. Garavito was born in 1957 in Colombia and grew up with two neglectful and abusive parents. At a young age, Garavito was violent and, like many other serial killers, began to kill small animals for pleasure. Garavito admits to molesting several young children while still a teenager. As a young adult, he began dating a woman by the name of Luz Orzoco, at which time he was reportedly a loving stepfather. However, he turned back to violence and became an alcoholic early on in his relationship with Orzoco. After being fired from a job, starting fights, and being forced into therapy, Garavito began worshiping the ideals of Adolf Hitler. In the late 1980s, he started a massive killing spree that would last years. It is estimated by Colombian authorities that Garavito raped and murdered at least two hundred young men, even though only 147 deaths at the hands of Garavito have been confirmed. 

The real question is- why did you read this article? And why is the modern individual so fascinated by the murderous criminals of our past? The answer is simple. As humans, we are fascinated by the morbid and horrifying. We want to know more about things that scare us.

What you should learn from this article? Lock your doors. Serial killers are far more common than you think.