THE 25 MOST FAMOUS SERIAL KILLERS - ARTE - 2025

The serial murderers are people who deliberately kill three people or more. They are usually psychopaths, that is, people with little empathy, superficial charm, usually intelligent and without the need to establish deep relationships with others.

Normally, and as you can see, the causes of murders are usually both power and sexual lust. Throughout history we have known a large number of murderers, starting with the well-known Jack the Ripper, for example, and ending with some more recent ones such as the marriage of Daniel and Manuela Ruda.

You may also be interested in this list of psychopathic children.

List of the 20 most famous serial killers

1- Jack the ripper

Probably the most famous serial killer of all time. His pseudonym is due to a letter released in the media under his name.

His victims came from the slums of London, being commonly prostitutes. Strangulation and slaughter was her way of killing. In addition, she extracted the organs from three of her victims.

The number of victims is not fixed, since some attribute certain murders to him and others not. He was never "hunted" and his story is represented and adapted in a multitude of media.

2- Cayetano Santos Godino

One of the first known serial killers in Argentine history. Known as the "short-eared petiso", being just a boy, he already attempted several homicides with several young people of 2 and 3 years.

He came to confess up to 4 murders and several failed attempts. He was sent to various psychiatric hospitals and the causes of his death were not entirely clear.

3- Albert Fish

Nicknamed "the gray man", this American has been the protagonist of one of the most cruel atrocities in memory.

He sexually abused more than 100 children. He also claimed to have murdered 5 people. Among his charges is murder and cannibalism.

In January 1936 he was executed after being sentenced to death.

4- Erzsébet Bathory

Hungarian countess and aristocrat of the 16th century. Known as "the bloody countess" she holds the Guinness record for the woman who has carried out the most murders in history with a total of 650.

It is said that the murders he carried out were related to his obsession with eternal beauty. She used the blood of her victims to stay young.

5- Andrei Chikatilo

Andrei Chikatilo has earned a reputation as the worst assassin in the entire history of the Soviet Union. At least 52 women are speculated to have been murdered and mutilated. He killed them to satisfy his sexual desires.

In his first murder, he called a young girl, who he aggressively undressed. She accidentally observed how she began to bleed after suffering a scratch, which gave her an erection. He finally stabbed her to orgasm.

His modus operandi always consisted of stabbing 40 to 50 times and mutilating different parts of the body.

His death came after being sentenced to death in 1994.

6- Charles Manson

Guilty of murdering a total of 7 people, including actress Sharon Tate. Her peculiarity was to drag with her a group of followers who also carried out several murders.

His sentence was the chair, a sentence that was reduced to life imprisonment when the death penalty was eliminated in California.

7- The Zodiac Killer

He sent letters to the police and newspapers to detail his crimes. In addition, they were accompanied by different cryptograms where their identity was deciphered.

Among his victims were several young couples and a taxi driver. He also threatened to kill school children.

He was never caught and, to this day, the Zodiac killer could be around the age of 65.

8- John Wayne Gacy

Under the pseudonym "the killer clown", he earned it after his parades and children's parties to which he attended disguised as a clown.

His crime was to murder no more and no less than 33 young people, of which 26 were buried in the basement of his house. The remaining 4 ended up in a river, and 3 in other places in their home.

He was executed in 94 by means of a legal injection.

9- Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka

One of the rarest and most bizarre serial killer cases in the world. This happy and perfect couple of handsome young men hid a terrible truth: they practiced multiple rapes and murders of young Canadians in their city.

A total of 3 deaths and more than 40 sexual assaults are attributed to them.

10- Ed Gein

Ed Gein was known for his macabre actions. He carried out multiple murders, and when his home was investigated, seats made of human skin were found as well as skull plates and bed posts. Also a belt made from human nipples alongside other garments.

The American admitted to the practice of stealing corpses from their graves.

11- Aileen Crol Wournos

Executed on October 9, 2002 by lethal injection, Wournos was a native Michigan woman who murdered a total of 7 men. She argued in her defense that this was in her own defense when she was practicing the prostitution profession.

The curious thing about his case was the regularity of the deaths, since, except for the first, there were practically one a month

12- Daniel and Manuela Ruda

With the nickname of "the sicarios of satan", this chilling marriage had in mind "to win hell" with his own works.

They killed their victims by a satanic method, striking blows that matched the devil's numbers. Later they drank her blood and spread it throughout the rooms.

13- Dennis Andrew Nilsen

Dennis is the cause of six murders plus two failed attempts.

Nilsen performed necrophilia with the bodies. He first killed them by drowning or suffocating them, dismembered them, and finally dumped their remains down the drain.

14- Javed Iqbal

Pakistani who ended up committing suicide after confessing his multiple crimes of murder and sexual abuse of more than 100 children between the ages of 6 and 16.

He usually went to orphans, abused them, and later killed and dismembered them.

15- Manuel Delgado Villegas

The first Spanish serial killer. His nickname was "the arropiero." He killed a total of 48 people during the 1960s. His way of killing was carried out by a mortal blow that he learned during his military training.

As a curiosity, when he was arrested and was traveling with the agents, he heard on the radio that a Mexican had killed a greater number of people than he, to which he replied: «Give me 24 hours and I assure you that a miserable Mexican is not going to be better murderer than a Spaniard ».

15- Anatoli Onoprienko

This Ukrainian serial killer confessed to killing 52 people in 1996.

His way of carrying out the crimes was based on entering a house in the wee hours of the morning. There he gathered the whole family and killed the men with a firearm and the women with a white one.

15- Harold Shipman

One of the biggest serial killers. Up to 218 people were killed at the hands of Harold Shipman, better known as "doctor death."

For almost 20 years he was practicing his work as a doctor while administering lethal doses of narcotics to his different patients.

After being arrested, the doctor was found in his cell hanged.

18- Jeffrey Dahmer

Responsible for the death of 17 people over ten years, to whom he practiced necrophilia and cannibalism. His mental problems would be born from sexual instability, making him a sadist. First he killed them, then he had sex with them and finally he dismembered their bodies.

In 2002 the film Dhamer was released, which tells his story and is played by actor Jeremy Renner.

19- Herman Webster Mudgett

Mudgett is credited with around 200 murders, always being rich and pretty young women.

Born in the mid-nineteenth century, he built a hotel in the shape of a medieval castle to host his hosts. This one was equipped with multiple traps to kill them like an incineration machine or even a quicklime pit.

20- Kathryn Schoonover

Last place goes to Kathryn Schoonover. She did not become a serial killer as such, but she was close.

This terminal cancer patient was arrested just before she produced a mass murder, for which she would send 100 bags of cyanide by mail to different addresses chosen at random. The woman would pass them off as a nutritional supplement.

21- John George Haigh

Source: Sussex Constabulary He was an English serial killer. The murders were carried out in the 1940s. He was charged with the murder of 6 people, but claimed that he murdered 9.

He would take his victims to a warehouse, where he would shoot them and then dissolve their corpses using sulfuric acid.

22- Arthur Shawcross

Known as The Genesee River Killer. He committed more than 10 murders in his entire life. His victims were children and prostitutes, for the latter he was sentenced to 250 years in prison. He passed away in 2008 from cardiac arrest.

23- Peter Sutcliffe

Nicknamed The Yorkshire Ripper for the brutality of his murders. He murdered 13 prostitutes. He mutilated the genitals, extracted the organs, and took out the bodies of his victims.

24- Richard Ramirez

Known as The Night Stalker, he murdered 14 people in Los Angeles, California in the 80's. His crimes were various; rapes, kidnappings and robberies.

He was sentenced to the death penalty but died of kidney failure at 53 years of age.

25- Leonard Lake

He raped, tortured and murdered more than 15 people with his accomplice Charles Ng in a cabin in Calaveras, California. They made recordings of the heinous crimes.

He committed suicide after being caught by the police with two cyanide pills.