Serial Killers

Gary Mark Gilmore (December 4, 1940 — January 17, 1977) was an American criminal and spree killer who gained international notoriety for demanding that his death sentence be fulfilled following two murders he committed in Utah. He became the first person executed in the United States after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a new series of death penalty statutes in the 1976 decision Gregg v. Georgia (these new statutes avoiding the problems that had led earlier death penalty statutes to be deemed unconstitutional in Furman v. Georgia).

A look at the lives of the two most powerful European leaders of the 20th century.

Jack the Ripper is a pseudonym given to an unidentified serial killer active in the largely impoverished Whitechapel area and adjacent districts of London, England, in late 1888. The name originated in a letter sent to the London Central News Agency by someone claiming to be the murderer. The victims were women earning income as prostitutes. Most victims' throats were slit, after which the bodies were mutilated. The removal of internal organs from three of the victims led some officials at the time of the murders to propose that the killer possessed anatomical or surgical knowledge. Newspapers, whose circulation had been growing during this era, bestowed widespread and enduring notoriety on the killer because of the savagery of the attacks and the failure of the police to capture the murderer. Because the killer's identity has never been confirmed, the legends surrounding the murders have become a combination of genuine historical research, folklore, and pseudohistory. Many authors, historians, and amateur detectives have proposed theories about the identity of the killer and his victims.

Joel David Rifkin (born January 20 1959) is an American serial killer convicted of the murder of nine women (although it is believed he killed as many as 17 ), mostly drug addicted prostitutes, between 1989 and 1993 in New York City. Although Rifkin often hired prostitutes in Brooklyn and Manhattan, he lived in East Meadow, a suburban town on Long Island. During his trial, Rifkin was represented by Mineola-based attorney John Lawrence.

Moses Sithole (born November 17, 1964) was a South African serial killer who committed the "ABC Murders", so named because they began in Atteridgeville, continued in Boksburg and finished in Cleveland, a suburb of Johannesburg. Sithole was born in Vosloorus, a poor neighborhood of Boksburg in apartheid-era South Africa, the fourth of six children. His father, Simon Sithole died when Moses was five years old, and his mother became an alcoholic. Moses' mother, Sophie Tunghuweera, was a violent alcoholic who placed all of her children in an orphanage. Sithole claimed to have been abused in foster care, and he eventually returned to his mother, who placed him back in foster care. He ran away once again and stayed with his older brother. He began as a serial rapist during late adolescence, claiming three victims before his arrest in 1984. One of his victims identified Sithole as her rapist, and testified against him during his trial. He was imprisoned for nine years, during which he himself was sexually abused by fellow prisoners. He was released from prison in early 1994. Sithole would gain access to victims by pretending to be a businessman and offering them work, going so far as to invent an apocraphyl charity organization. After gaining enough of their trust, he would rape and strangle his victims and would leave their bodies in velds. By early 1995, he had claimed over 30 victims, igniting a nationwide panic. In August 1995, Sithole was identified as having been seen with one of the victims; police soon discovered details of his fake business and previous rape conviction. Panicked, he went on the run. He called journalist Tamsen DeBeer and identified himself as the killer. At the third call he gave DeBeer a number to call back. The police rushed to the pay phone he was calling from, but they were too late. Shortly after that Sithole contacted his brother-in-law, who promised him to help him get a gun and arranged a meeting. The brother-in-law notified the police, but Sithole sensed a trap at the meeting spot and ran. Police shot him twice when he charged them with an axe, wounding him before taking him into custody. He eventually confessed to the murders. On December 5, 1997 Sithole was sentenced to 2,410 years for the murders of 37 women and one child committed between 1994 and 1995, along with 40 rapes and various lesser offenses. These offenses sum to 12 years for each of the 40 rapes, 50 years for each of the 38 murders, and another five years for each of the six robberies. His sentences did not run concurrently. Sithole will not be eligible for parole before 2927. He is currently incarcerated in C-Max, the maximum security section of Pretoria Central Prison. He is believed to have suffered severe sexual abuse by other prisoners, and had contracted AIDS in 2000.

The Tag Team from Hell: the Sadist King and the Generalissimo of Pain. The numbers speak for themselves, or maybe not. Lucas and Toole could either be the deadliest team of killers in the Archives, or the greatest hoaxers in crime history. No one can be quite sure how many people they killed even if they confessed and recanted up to 600 murders. Once labelled the "most infamous man on death row", Lucas, at the time of his death, was remembered by prison authorities as "the best" working the prison sewing machines. With his death the night of March 12, 2001, Henry Lee Lucas took to his grave either a far-reaching confession hoax, or a lethal cross-country rampage of random serial killing.

Pedro Alonso López (born October 8, 1948 in Santa Isabel, Colombia) is a Colombian-born confessed serial killer, accused of killing more than 300 women across South America. Aside from uncited local accounts, López’s crimes first received international attention from an interview conducted by Ron Laytner, a long time freelance photojournalist who first met López in his Ambato Prison cell in 1980. Laytner’s interviews were widely published, first in the Chicago Tribune on Sunday, July 13, 1980, then in the Toronto Sun and The Sacramento Bee on July 21, 1980, and later in many other North American papers and foreign publications over the years. Apart from Laytner’s account and two brief Associated Press wire reports the story was published in The World's Most Infamous Murders by Boar and Blundell. According to Laytner’s story, López became known as the "Monster of the Andes" in 1980 when he led police to the graves of 53 of his victims in Ecuador, all girls between nine and twelve years old. In 1983 he was found guilty of murdering 110 young girls in Ecuador alone and confessed to a further 240 murders of missing girls in neighboring Peru and Colombia.

Ricardo Muñoz Ramírez (born on February 29, 1960[1] in El Paso, Texas) is a Satanist and convicted American serial killer awaiting execution on California's death row at San Quentin State Prison. Prior to his capture, Ramírez was dubbed as the "Night Stalker" by the news media as he terrorized citizens of Los Angeles, California.

Richard Franklin Speck (December 6, 1941 – December 5, 1991) was a mass murderer who systematically killed eight student nurses from South Chicago Community Hospital in Chicago, Illinois on July 14, 1966.

Gary Leon Ridgway (born February 18, 1949), known as the Green River Killer, is an American serial killer. Ridgway murdered numerous women in Washington during the 1980s and 1990s. He strangled them with rope, fishing line and anything else he could find. He also engaged in forms of torture including rape and necrophilia. On November 30, 2001, as he was leaving a Renton, Washington factory where he worked, he was arrested for the murders of four women whose cases were linked to him through DNA evidence.[1] In November of 2003 he pleaded guilty to 48 counts of aggravated murder, although he says he actually killed 90 women or more, almost all prostitutes. The murders occurred in the early 1980s. As part of a plea bargain, he was spared the death penalty and received a sentence of life imprisonment without parole.

"The Manson Women: Inside the Murders" delivers the accounts of Leslie Van Houten and Patricia Krenwinkel of how they and other members of their love-in went about killing seven people in California 25 years ago.

Timothy James McVeigh (April 23, 1968 – June 11, 2001) was a United States Army veteran and security guard who was convicted of bombing the Alfred P. Murrah Building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995, the second anniversary of the Waco Siege, as revenge or to inspire revolt against what he considered a tyrannical federal government. The bombing killed 168 people, and was the deadliest act of terrorism within the United States prior to the September 11, 2001 attacks[citation needed]. He was convicted of 11 federal offenses, sentenced to death, and executed on June 11, 2001.

Albert Henry DeSalvo (September 3, 1931 - November 25, 1973) was a criminal in Boston, Massachusetts, United States who confessed to being the "Boston Strangler", the murderer of 13 women in the Boston area. His confession has been disputed, and debate continues regarding which crimes DeSalvo actually committed.

Hamilton Howard "Albert" Fish (May 19, 1870 – January 16, 1936) was an American serial killer. He was also known as the Gray Man, the Werewolf of Wysteria, the Brooklyn Vampire, and The Boogeyman. A child rapist and cannibal, he boasted that he had "had children in every state," and at one time put the figure at around 100. However, it is not clear whether he was talking about rapes or cannibalization, less still as to whether he was telling the truth. He was a suspect in at least five murders in his lifetime.

The case of Marc Dutroux is one of the most shocking in Belgian history. While the crimes themselves are stomach churning, the inadequacy of the Belgian justice system could also be considered scandalous in the wake of the investigation which found Dutroux guilty of kidnap, torture and sexual abuse of children as young as eight-years-old.