12 Famous Serial Killers For Every Month Of The Year
Some minds are completely beyond dark and twisted.
Netflix's new release of "The Ted Bundy Tapes" has everyone watching and learning about one of the most revered serial murderers in history. People have been killing each other since the beginning of time, really, just look at Gilles de Rais, a serial killer of children in 1405, who hid behind his position of knight and lord of Brittany.
Continually, for as long as people have been killing, others have been curious to learn about these more or less gruesome stories and figure out why they may have occurred. There are studies, careers, and lives lived around the fact that people kill people. So, in lieu of your Ted Bundy Tapes, here are 12 serial killers that you may or may not have known about sorted by their birthdays.
January 14th, 1946: Harold Shipman
After this English general practitioner was found guilty on January 31st, 2000, a two-year-long investigation was conducted which identified 218 victims and estimated his total victim count at 250. About 80% of those killed were elderly women but his youngest confirmed victim was a 41-year-old man. Although they were never confirmed, there are suspicions that he killed patients as young as four years old.
February 29th, 1960: Richard Ramirez
In the span of a year it was confirmed and Ramirez was convicted of 13 counts of murder, 5 attempted murders, 11 sexual assaults, and 14 burglaries on September 20th, 1989. He was sentenced to die in California's gas chamber and was reported stating "Big deal. Death always went with the territory. See you in Disneyland."
March 17th, 1942: John Wayne Gacy
Known as the "Killer Clown" because of his charitable services and clown character for children's parties, Gacy murdered at least 33 teenage boys and young men between 1972 and 1978 in Cook County, Illinois.
All of Gacy's known murders were committed inside his house and all but one of his victims were murdered by either asphyxiation or strangulation. He buried 26 of his victims in the crawl space of his home, three other victims were buried elsewhere on his property, and the bodies of his last four known victims were discarded in the Des Plaines River.
April 9th, 1974: Alexander Pichushkin
Motivated, in part, by a "competition" with another notorious Russian serial killer, Andrei Chikatilo, the 'Rostov Ripper', Pichushkin has said his aim was to kill 64 people, the number of squares on a chessboard. He later revised this statement, saying that he would have continued killing indefinitely had he not been stopped.
Pichushkin targeted, for the most part, elderly, homeless men, and his signature became a vodka bottle pushed into the gaping skull of his victims. He would always attack from behind in order to take the victim by surprise and to avoid spilling blood on his clothes.
He said that killing made him feel like God, "For me, life without murder is like life without food for you. I felt like the father of all these people, since it was me who opened the door for them to another world."
May 19th, 1870: Albert Fish
Jeffrey Dahmer is everyone's favorite May-born cannibal, but here is another to widen your arsenal:
Hamilton Howard "Albert" Fish was an American serial killer, child rapist and cannibal known as the "Gray Man," "Werewolf of Wysteria," "Brooklyn Vampire," "Moon Maniac," and "The Boogey Man." Fish once boasted that he "had children in every state", and at one time stated his number of victims was about 100. However, it is unclear as to what crime he was referring to or if the statement was in fact, true.Overall Fish confessed to three murders and to stabbing at least two other people but he is suspect in at least five during his lifetime.
The kidnapping and murder of Grace Budd, was what got him caught and convicted. After finding an ad in the paper for work for the girl's older brother, Fish paid the family a visit. Upon arriving, Grace quickly became the primary target. After gaining her parent's approval to bring her to a child's party she disappeared and he later sent the grieving mother a letter explaining details of what he did, how she tasted, and how long it took him to eat her entire body (nine days). That was not the reason for the letter however, he sent it to tell the girl's mother that despite all of that, he did not rape her, "she died a virgin."
June 26th, 1953: Robert Maudsley
Hannibal the Cannibal requires his own special containment and has become the longest-serving British prisoner and the earliest person still living to be subjugated to a whole life order. He is responsible for the murders of four people, three of these occurring in prison after receiving a life sentence for a single murder.
One afternoon in 1978, Maudsley killed two fellow prisoners, hiding one body under his bed and stabbing the other, then calmly walked into the prison officer's room, placed the dagger on the table and told him that the next roll call would be two short.
July 24th, 1909: John George Haigh
Commonly known as the "Acid Bath Murderer," Haigh was convicted for the murders of six people, although he claimed to have killed nine. He battered or shot his victims to death and used concentrated sulphuric acid to dispose of their bodies before forging papers so he could sell the victims' possessions for substantial sums of money.
August 27th, 1906: Ed Gein
On the morning of November 16, 1957, Plainfield hardware store owner Bernice Worden disappeared, Gein was arrested later that night and his farm searched. A Waushara County Sheriff's deputydiscovered Worden's decapitated body in a shed, hung upside down by her legs with a crossbar at her ankles and ropes at her wrists, and the torso was "dressed out like a deer."
Among other horrors, searching the house, the worst things authorities found included a wastebasket made of human skin, skin covering several chair seats, bowls made from human skulls, a corset made from a female torso skinned from shoulders to waist, leggings made from leg skin, masks made from the skin of female heads, Bernice Worden's entire head in a burlap sack, Bernice Worden's heart in a plastic bag in front of Gein's potbellied stove, a belt made from nipples, a pair of lips on a window shade drawstring, and a lampshade made from the skin of human faces.
September 7th, 1947: Graham Young
Young became known as the "Teacup Poisoner," and later, the "St. Albans Poisoner," he used poison to kill his victims (obviously). He was sent to Broadmoor Hospital in 1962 after poisoning several members of his family and after his release he went on to poison seven more people, two of which died. While he attempted to kill many, Young only succeeded three times.
October 16th, 1936: Andrei Chikatilo
His Russian name being Андре́й Рома́нович Чикати́ло, the Butcher of Rostov was a Soviet serial killer who sexually assaulted, murdered, and mutilated at least 52 women and children between 1978 and 1990. Chikatilo confessed to 56 murders and was convicted and sentenced to death for 52 of his confessions in October 1992, he was executed in February 1994.
November 24th, 1946: Ted Bundy
Ted Bundy was an American serial killer, kidnapper, rapist, burglar, and necrophile who assaulted and murdered numerous young women and girls during the 1970s and possibly earlier. His victims regarded him as handsome and charismatic, he exploited these traits to lure people away to overpower and assault them in secluded areas. His charm also helped him to deny accusations and evade capture for over a decade.
Bundy decapitated at least 12 victims and kept some of the severed heads as mementos in his apartment. He also confessed to 30 homicides that he committed in seven states between 1974 and 1978, however, he true number of victims is unknown and possibly higher.
He once called himself "the most cold-hearted son of a bitch you'll ever meet."
Biographer Ann Rule described Bundy as "a sadistic sociopath who took pleasure from another human's pain and the control he had over his victims, to the point of death, and even after."
Attorney Polly Nelson, a member of his last defense team, wrote he was "the very definition of heartless evil."
December 18th, 1948: Edmund Kemper
Edmund Kemper murdered ten people, including his paternal grandparents at age 15, and later on in his life, his mother, and one of her friends. After being convicted once, Kemper was released at the age of 21 after convincing psychiatrists he was rehabilitated, and could be regarded as non-threatening by his victims.
After being released however, he went on a spree, targeting, luring, and killing female hitchhikers and taking their corpses back to his home to be decapitated, dismembered and violated. After killing his mother, the Co-Ed killer turned himself in to the authorities.
He has since waived his right to a parole hearing several times and has said he is "happy" in prison.
