40+ Disturbing Serial Killers Who Will Keep You Up at Night

He’s known many names, but after over 40 years, Joseph James DeAngelo has finally been caught for the hideous crimes he committed in California throughout the late 70s and 80s. The Original Night Stalker committed at least 50 known rapes and 12 murders before disappearing in 1986. READ MORE.  

A contractor known around his neighborhood as a friendly figure who enjoyed dressing up as a clown and entertaining children at hospitals and fundraising events, John Wayne Gacy had an unimaginably dark side. The sadistic killer murdered 33 men, and hid many of their corpses in his Chicago home. Learn more about the killer clown in Tim Cahill's Buried Dreams. READ MORE

The Zodiac Killer has evaded the police since his crimes in the 60s and 70s, which makes his crimes and communication with the press all the more chilling. He claimed responsibility for 37 murders, but investigators can only agree on five confirmed victims. The Killer is most known for the letters and cryptograms he sent to the press, which unfortunately never led to his capture. READ MORE.  

Elizabeth Bathory's vanity and quest for eternal youth reportedly knew no bounds. Known as The Blood Countess, Bathory is believed to have tortured and murdered 650 young girls in order to receive the restorative properties of bathing in their virginal blood. READ MORE.

England's first female serial killer, Mary Ann Cotton killed her three husbands, her mother, her lover, and 11 of her 13 children. Her weapon of choice? Arsenic. She took advantage of the 19th century's high mortality rates for children, rampant infection, and poor record-keeping to sow a path of murder behind her. READ MORE.

This demented killer cut a trail of death across the French countryside in 1897, claiming 11 known victims. But France’s answer to Jack the Ripper was no match for Alexandre Lacassagne, a brilliant criminologist and real-life Sherlock Holmes. READ MORE.

By the time Andrei Chikatilo was first taken into custody in 1984, he had claimed 32 victims. But it was discovered that his blood type didn't match the blood found at the scenes of some unsolved crimes, so he was released, an error that would have unimaginably deadly consequences. Russia's most evil serial killer was on the prowl again, and would take dozens of lives before being apprehended at last in 1994. READ MORE

Lethal lovers Raymond Fernandez and Martha Beck are believed to have claimed up to 20 victims during a two-year span in the 1940s. The two found their female victims through personal ads, earning them the moniker 'The Lonely Hearts Killers.' READ MORE.

Meet the Harpe Brothers, two murderous frontiersmen whom many believe are America’s first serial killers. This deadly 18th century duo left a swath of utter destruction behind them as they traveled, killing men, women, and children indiscriminately. READ MORE.

In 1998, eight women were murdered and stashed in the attic by Kendall Francois. Author Fred Rosen set out to tell their story in his book, Body Dump. READ MORE.

The Yorkshire Ripper, Peter Sutcliffe, is nothing if not brutal. He murdered 13 women, mostly sex workers, but also left a bloody trail of badly injured women in his wake. After evading arrest for many years, Sutcliffe was arrested in 1981 when he was caught with a sex worker. He was sentenced to 20 life sentences without parole. READ MORE.

The mad doctor will see you now. H.H. Holmes killed at least nine people, confessed to as many as 30 slayings, and may have been responsible for up to 200. Yet it wasn’t just the body count that earned Holmes his place in serial killer history—but the ghoulish way the deeds were done. READ MORE.

Nurse Genene Jones is believed to have murdered upwards of 40 newborns in medical facilities across Texas in the 1970s and 80s, avoiding capture thanks to a hospital cover-up. READ MORE.

Dr. Marcel Petiot murdered people who were looking to escape Nazi-occupied France during World War II. His defense? He only killed collaborators and members of the Gestapo. Author Thomas Maeder examines this chilling case, and explains why Petiot is the “perfect psychopath.” READ MORE.

He was convicted of killing 49 women over the course of the 90s and 80s, confessed to killing almost twice that number, and later claimed that he took so many lives he lost count. READ MORE.

Hungarian sadist Béla Kiss enticed dozens of women to his home in Budapest via personal ads, selecting those who were the most lonely and vulnerable. Instead of finding love, these women met their death at the hands of a mysterious maniac. To this day, the fate of this horrific serial killer is still unknown. READ MORE.

Night Stalker, Richard Ramirez, evaded capture for over a year as he terrorized people down the coast of California. READ MORE.

Nebraska misfit Charles Starkweather aspired to emulate his rebel model, James Dean. Unfortunately, his 'rebellious' streak led him to murder 11 people and two dogs for the hell of it. Read on to learn more about one of the most notorious killers in American history. READ MORE.

When she was arrested in 1990, Aileen Wuornos forever altered the public perception of serial killers as exclusively male. Between 1989-1990, Wuornos murdered seven men by shooting them at point-blank range. READ MORE.

In November 1963, serial killer Albert DeSalvo came looking for his next victim, Joann Graff, and her neighbors led him straight to her door. DeSalvo's unimaginable crimes and the frantic quest to catch him are chronicled in The Boston Strangler, Gerold Frank’s bestselling, Edgar Award-winning true crime chronicle. READ MORE.

Fritz Haarmann claimed more than 24 male victims between 1918 and 1924, taking advantage of the confusion of war-torn Germany to commit his particularly nightmarish acts. Haarmann killed many of his victims through a fatal bite to their Adam's apple, earning him the nickname "The Vampire of Hanover." READ MORE.

In 1953, John Christie was hanged for the murder of his wife … but she was just one of his many victims. READ MORE.

When Cathy Wood and Gwen Graham met through their job as nurses at the Alpine Manor senior living facility in Michigan, the two fell hard for each other, and pledged to stay together for "forever and five days." But their toxic romance had lethal consequences for their elderly patients, whom the nurses murdered ruthlessly. Go inside their violent love in Lowell Cauffiel’s true crime novel Forever and Five Days. READ MORE.

With his tousled auburn mane, Paul John Knowles may have looked like a rockstar. But the truth is, he was a stone-cold killer, responsible for the deaths of up to 35 people. READ MORE.

At 19, Judith Ann Neelley became the youngest woman ever on death row. The torture murders Judith committed with her much-older husband Alvin Howard are chronicled in Thomas H. Cook’s Early Graves. READ MORE.

British serial killer Dennis Nilsen claimed numerous lives inside his home, then hid the bodies beneath floorboards or propped them in armchairs while he watched TV. According to the Nilsen himself, he sought someone who would never leave.  READ MORE.

Socialite Delphine Lalaurie was the toast of Louisiana–until her neighbors discovered the appalling secret torture chamber hidden in the attic of the home she built. READ MORE.

From 1967 to 1971, a serial killer referred to as the “Ypsilanti Ripper” murdered and dismembered half a dozen women in Southeastern Michigan. The perpetrator, John Norman Chapman, was a former frat member whose sadism knew no end. READ MORE.

Desperate to protect her children from a family curse, fortune-teller Leonarda Cianciulli took drastic measures. Believing that human sacrifice would be required to protect her remaining children from premature death, she killed three of her clients then baked their remains into soap and teacakes. READ MORE

Robert Berdella was the epitome of your kind and quiet guy next door. But his unassuming facade belied Berdella's true violent nature. READ MORE.

Motivated by an insatiable desire for monetary gain, Belle Gunness murdered her many suitors in cold blood, as well as possibly taking the lives of her husbands and children. The calculating killer enticed suitors to her hog farm, ominously warning them to "come prepared to stay forever." The brutal black widow escaped capture in 1908, and her ultimate fate is unknown. READ MORE.

Run yourself a hot bath before reading the grisly tale of England’s Acid Bath Murderer, John George Haigh, who disposed of his unfortunate victims' remains via bubble baths full of acid. READ MORE.

Just because the Boogey Man never came for you as a child doesn’t mean all monsters are make-believe. Meet Albert Fish, a real-life nightmare from the turn of the century with an uncontrollable hunger for the flesh of small children. READ MORE.

Known as the Suffolk Strangler, Steve Wright murdered five sex workers by strangling them. In a specialized operation, Wright was caught and prosecuted for his crimes in a very public trial. He was found guilty and sentenced to several life sentences. READ MORE.   

This murderous husband and wife tortured and killed at least nine people together - including some of their own children. The couple was known for violent tendencies, incest, and physical and emotional abuse towards their sons and daughters. The couple was arrested in 1994, much to the relief of the people they tortured for so long. READ MORE.  

Blind, Torture, and Kill. When Dennis Rader was caught almost thirty years after his reign of terror in Wichita, Kansas, the world was shocked. What looked to be an ordinary father was in fact an evil madman who killed at least ten people in the most cruel of ways. Though he communicated with the police and the public many times, it took years to catch him. READ MORE.  

Also known as the Toy Box Killer, David Parker Ray is known as one of the most sadistic killers in history for his methods using sexual torture devices. After years of torturing and murdering over 30 people in his special toy box room, Ray was finally caught after a victim escaped and called the authorities. READ MORE.  

He’s infamous for being one of the best known cannibals in history. He murdered 17 men in a 13-year period, but it’s the rape, necrophilia, cannibalism, and preservation of human remains that has made Jeffrey Dahmer so horribly captivating to the public eye. Dahmer was arrested in 1991 and was murdered by a fellow prison inmate in 1994. READ MORE.  

The Butcher Baker, Robert Hansen, terrorized Anchorage, Alaska from 1971 to 1983. While many knew him as a timid baker and avid hunter, Hansen’s secret life was one of murder, violence, and literally hunting women as prey. He was sentenced to 461 years in prison, but died there at the age of 75 in 2014. READ MORE.  

Every serial killer has an extra evil twist, and Tony Costa was known for cutting up the bodies of his victims and burying the parts in his garden. Terrible fertilizer, but Costa got away with his crimes for years despite media attention and international infamy. Costa is known to have killed at least four women, but it’s thought that there could be even more victims. READ MORE. 

Why is Nikolai Dzhumagaliev known as Metal Fang? It’s because he used his metal dentures to eat his victims after drinking their blood. The Russian serial killer murdered during a time that Russians denied the existence of such serial killers, but he existed and killed at least four victims in his years long rampage. READ MORE.  

Also known as the Chessboard Killer, Alexander Pichushkin’s main goal in life was to claim enough victims to fill a chessboard. He made it to 50 out of 64, but the number is still staggering. The Russian murderer killed homeless and elderly men as well as some women and at least one child. READ MORE.