20 KILLER CHILDREN AND PSYCHOPATHS IN HISTORY - ARTE - 2025

The stories of murderous and psychopathic children have that halo of shock because of how shocking it is to know that there are minors who once dared to take the life of another person.

In this list you will find many mentally disturbed people, but also children who were exposed to act like this due to their family or social environment. Heartbroken boys who didn't have a normal childhood and who totally destroyed it when they committed the crime.

Killer kid list

1- Jon Venables and Robert Thompson

James Patrick Bulger (1990 - 1993) was a boy from Kirby, England, murdered at the age of two.

He was kidnapped and tortured by two 10-year-old boys, Robert Thompson and Jon Venables. His mutilated body was found on the train lines 4 kilometers from Walton in Liverpool, two days after the death.

Each of the boys was charged on February 20, 1993, and on November 24, 1993, they were found guilty of Bulger's murder, making them the youngest convicts of the 20th century.

2- Leopold and Loeb

Nathan Freudenthal Leopold Jr. (1904-1971) and Richard Albert Loeb (1905-1936) were two wealthy students at the University of Chicago who, in May 1924, kidnapped and murdered 14-year-old Robert Frank in Chicago.

They committed the crime as a demonstration of their intellectual superiority, as they thought they were capable of committing "the perfect crime." Both men were sentenced to life in prison plus an additional 99 years. Loeb was killed by another prisoner in 1936 and Leopold was paroled in 1958.

3- Willie James Bosket

William James Bosket Jr. (1962) is an American convict convicted of murder and whose crimes were committed while he was a minor. In 1978, a Bosket, then 15 years old, murdered two men in attempted robberies, for which he was sentenced to 5 years in prison.

Since then, this man has been in custody his entire life, except for 100 days. Although he was not sentenced to life imprisonment, his continuous acts in his confinement guarantee him an exit no less than the year 2062, when he would be 100 years old.

4- Mary Bell

Mary Flora Bell (1957) is an English woman who, in 1968, at the age of 10, strangled two younger children to death in Scotswood. She was convicted in December of the same year for the murder of Martin Brown (4 years) and Brian Howe (3 years).

The latter was carried out in complicity with a friend named Norma Joyce Bell. Since winning her freedom in 1980, Bell has lived under a number of pseudonyms. Her identity was protected by a court order, which was extended to protect her daughter's.

5- Amarjeet Sada

Armajeet Sada is an 8-year-old boy convicted of the death of three children, including his sister. All of his alleged victims were under one year of age. When the authorities confront the boy about the deaths, he confesses and leads them to the place where the bodies are found.

Subsequently, the minor confesses to the murder of his 8-month-old sister 3 months ago and his 6-month-old cousin a year before the event. It was later learned of the family's knowledge of Sada's behavior, but this was treated as a "family matter."

6- Joshua Phillips

Joshua Earl Patrick Phillips (1984) is an American convict convicted of murder in Jacksonville, Florida. He was charged in July 1999 for the murder of his 8-year-old neighbor, Maddie Clifton, which occurred in November 1998 when he was 14 years old.

That day the two minors were playing and apparently Phillips accidentally hits Clifton on the head causing it to bleed. Fearing the reprisals that this act could cause by his abusive father, he proceeds to murder the girl and hide her body in the room. Philips was sentenced to life in prison without benefit of parole.

7- Jesse Pomeroy

Jesse Harding Pomeroy (1859 - 1932) was the youngest person to be convicted of the crime of murder in the history of the state of Massachusetts.

Between 1871 and 1872 several cases of attack were reported by children and drew attention for the brutality of the attacks. In 1872 he was convicted and sentenced until he reached the age of majority.

In 1874 he is returned to his mother and shortly after a girl named Katie Curran disappears in the same area. In April, the girl's body was found in the basement of the Pomeroy family's home. The boy is sentenced to life imprisonment in solitary confinement. His death occurs in 1932 in a psychiatric hospital at the age of 73.

8- Harvey Robinson

Harvey Miguel Robinson (1974) is an American murderer who is sentenced to death in the state of Pennsylvania. He is one of the youngest serial killers in American history, only 18 years old at the time of his sentence. In 1993, Robinson attacked 5 women, killing 3 of them.

9- Eric Smith

Eric M. Smith (January 22, 1980) is an American criminal charged with the murder of 4-year-old Derrick Robie on August 2, 1993 in Steuben County, New York.

Smith was given a 9-year sentence, which was the longest possible sentence for juvenile murderers at the time. Smith said he was attacked by other children at school, as well as by his father and sister. He confessed to having vented his anger with Robie, but fearing that he would confess, he decided to kill him.

10- Edmund Kemper

Edmund Emil Kemper III (1948) is a serial killer, necrophiliac and cannibal suspect who committed the kidnapping and murder of several women in the 1970s, as well as his paternal grandparents and mother.

He lived as a young man in Montana with his abusive mother before moving to California where he murdered his grandparents at the age of 15.

He was diagnosed with schizophrenia before being sentenced to death. At the age of 21 he was released on account of psychiatrists. He later murdered several women and his mother before turning himself in to the authorities. He was sentenced to 8 consecutive life sentences.

11- Graham Young

Graham Frederick Young (1947-1990) was a British serial killer who used poison to kill his victims. From an early age he showed interest in toxins and their effects.

In 1962, at the age of 15, he tried to poison several members of his family, causing the death of his stepmother. After regaining his freedom in 1971, he tried to carry out the same act with 70 more people, two of whom died.

12- David Brom

David Brom (1971) is an American mass murderer. He was convicted of the murder of his parents and brothers with an ax in February 1988 near Rochester, Minnesota. He was sentenced to 3 consecutive life sentences and is currently eligible to regain his freedom in 2041.

13- Cinsy Collier and Shirley Wolf

On June 14, 1983, 15-year-old Cindy Collier and 14-year-old Shirley Wolf met at the pool at the Auburn Green condo. Both had in common that they had run away from their homes and began the search for a vehicle to steal to continue their escape.

85-year-old Anna Brackett invites the women into her home for a glass of water and that's where Collier and Wolf stab her to death. Both were sentenced to the maximum possible sentence for minors in the state of California at that time, which was detention up to the age of 27 for both.

14- Jordan Brown

Jordan Brown (1997) was found guilty at the age of 11 for the murder of his father's fiancee, 26-year-old Kenzie Marie Houk and the unborn child she was expecting.

According to the laws of the state of Pennsylvania, the minor was initially tried as an adult, but due to some lawsuits, he was finally treated by the juvenile law.

Brown is currently detained in a youth center until he reaches the age of 21.

15- George Stinney

George Junius Stinney Jr. (1929 - 1944) was a 14-year-old African-American convicted of murder after a discriminatory and racist trial in the town of Alcolu, South Carolina.

According to the investigation, Stinney confessed to the murder of two white girls (Katherine, 10 years old and Aime, 7 years old), but there was never an official written document that recorded this fact.

Stinney was arraigned in less than 10 minutes after taking a one-day trial by an all-white jury. He was the youngest person in the United States to be sentenced to death and executed in the 20th century.

16- Lionel Tate

Lionel Alexander Tate (1987) is considered the youngest American citizen to have been sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

In 2001, at the age of 13, Tate was convicted of the first degree murder of 6-year-old Tiffany Eunick in Broward County, Florida.

However, the sentence was overturned in 2004 and he was granted conditional release. The following year, Tate violated conditions by attempting an assault on a pizzeria and is currently serving 40 years in prison.

17- Barry Dale Loukaitis

The Fronier Middle School shooting was an event that occurred on February 2, 1996 in Moses Lake, Washington. The assailant was 14-year-old Barry Dale Loukaitis (1981), who managed to murder his algebra teacher and two students.

On the day of the shooting, Loukaitis dressed like a cowboy and carried two guns owned by his father. The minor was sentenced to two life sentences plus 205 years without the possibility of parole. However, this decision could be reversed with an early release in 2021.

18- Carig Price

Craig Chandler Price (1973) is an American serial killer who committed his crimes in Warwick, Rhode Island. In 1989 he was arrested for the murder of a woman and her two daughters in the same year and the murder of two others the year before.

The minor was prosecuted at the age of 15, which means that he could have been released at the age of 21. He was sentenced to an additional 10 to 25 years depending on his cooperation with his treatment.

19- Cayetano Santos Godino

Cayetano Santos Godino (1896 - 1944), also known as “Petido Orejudo”, was an Argentine serial killer who committed his crimes in the city of Buenos Aires at the age of 16.

He was responsible for the murder of 4 children, the attempted murder of 7 others and the 7 attempts to start fires. He was declared mentally ill and was interned in a hospital until his death under strange circumstances.

20- Alyssa Bustamante

Alyssa Dailene Bustamante (1994) was convicted when she was 15 for the murder of her neighbor, 9-year-old Elizabeth Olsen. The young woman previously presented signs of mental instability, which included a suicide attempt and self-inflicted cuts on her skin.

In subsequent statements, it was established that Bustamante performed the act with the sole motivation of knowing what it felt like to do it. In 2009, she was convicted of murder to life in prison without the possibility of parole. He was later granted this possibility, but Bustamante will have to pay a sentence of at least 35 years in prison.

References

1. Siddique, Harron. The Guardian. March 3, 2010. theguardian.com.
2. Baatz, Simon. Smithsonian. Leopold and Loeb's Criminal Minds. August 2008. smithsonianmag.com.
3. Hager, Eli. The Marshall Project. The Willie Bosket Case. December 29, 2014. themarshallproject.org.
4. Fraser, Lorraine. The Telegraph. How a 'terrified' Mary Bell walked back into the world. June 24, 2001. telegraph.co.uk.
5. Foster, Peter. The Telegraph. 'Serial killer', 8, charged with three murders. June 1, 2007. telegraph.co.uk.
6. Monacelli, Antonia. Owlcation. Murderous Children: Joshua Phillips (14) Murdered His 8-Year-Old Neighbor. May 23, 2016. owlcation.com.
7. Montillo, Roseanne. CBS News. The story of Jesse Pomeroy, 14-year-old serial killer. March 13, 2015. cbsnews.com.
8. Ramsland, Katherine. Psychology Today. Youngest Serial Killer on Death Row. July 3, 2012. psychologytoday.com.
9. Leung, Rebecca. CBS News. WHY DID ERIC KILL? December 10, 2004. cbsnews.com.