SERIAL KILLERS

Aileen Carol Wuornos was born February 29th 1956 in Rochester, Michigan. After being banished from her home after becoming pregnant at the age of 13, Aileen gave up her child and began hooking and living in abandoned cars. After a few years of this horrible living she hitched to Florida and continued hooking down there. Wournos began robbing and killing her "Johns". She killed a total of 7 men before being apprehended in the early 90s. She was convicted of 1st degree murder in January of 1992 and given the death sentence. By February of 1993 Wournos had received a total of 6th death sentences. After sitting on death row in Florida for 12 years, Wournos gave up all her appeals and asked to be put to death. Her request was carried out by lethal injection on October 9th 2002 at the age of 46. Wournos last words were "I'd just like to say I'm sailing with the Rock and I'll be back like Independence Day with Jesus, June 6, like the movie, big mother ship and all. I'll be back"
ALBERT FISH Fish was born on May 19,1870 in Washington, D.C. Albert Fish is the man who some believe to be the "most deranged killer in American history" (Rampo Catskill Library system, Biography resource center, Albert Fish ). So much so, that the character, Hannibal Lector in the movie Silence of the Lambs is partially based on him. Murder was not the only thing that Albert Fish indulged in. He also dabbed in cannibalism, fetishism, pedophilia, voyeurism, exhibitionism, and masochism. In 1910, Fish committed his first murder in which he mutilated and tortured his victim. From that point on, he set his sights on children as he saw them as easy targets. Fish traveled from state to state in the 1920's leaving a trail of victims from molestation to cases of children disappearing. Fish would torture, mutilate and eventually murder his victims using what he called his "Implements of Hell" which consisted of a meat cleaver, a butcher knife, and a saw. Fish also like to inflict pain on himself; he would insert needles far into his body to where they would get stuck. He also liked to have people paddle him with a paddle that had nail sticking out of the end so that it would make him bleed. Fish was caught on December 13, 1934. He earned himself the nickname, ..Brooklyn Vampire' by murdering four children from 1932-1934. There are conflicting resources over the actual number of murders and molestations Fish committed but he was suspected of at least fifteen murders and molested between one hundred to three hundred children. He was put to death January 16th 1936 at the age of 65 by electric chair in the Sing Sing Correctional Facility
BTK KILLER Dennis Rader also known as BTK is Wichita's most notorious serial killer, now connected with eight unsolved homicides from 1974 to 1986. BTK stands for "Bind, Torture and Kill," a style of killing he used. The serial killer used the initials in letters he sent to local media. His reign of terror started in 1974 he killed off and on until 1991 and he collected items from the scenes of the murders he committed and, reportedly, he had no items that were related to any other killings. Rader was particularly known for sending taunting letters to police and newspapers. There were several communications from BTK from 1974 to 1979. In March 2004, he began the series of 11 communications from BTK that led directly to his arrest in February 2005. He's now serving a life sentence in Kansas for the murder of 10 victims from 1974 though 1991.
ED GEIN
Born August 27th 1906 Gein was known for grave robbery, necrophilia, cannibalism, sadism and death fetishism. He used his victims flesh to sew up lamp shades and his couch. Gein also inspired movies like "Psycho", "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre", and "Silence of the Lambs". Born at the turn of the century into the small farming community of Plainfield, Wisconsin, Gein lived a repressive and solitary life on his family homestead with a weak, ineffectual brother and domineering mother who taught him from an early age that sex was a sinful thing. Eddie ran the family's 160-acre farm on the outskirts of Plainfield until his brother Henry died in 1944 and his mother in 1945. When she died her son was a thirty-nine-year-old bachelor, still emotionally enslaved to the woman who had tyrannized his life. The rest of the house, however, soon degenerated into a madman's shambles. Thanks to federal subsidies, Gein no longer needed to farm his land, and he abandoned it to do odd jobs here and there for the Plainfield residents, to earn him a little extra cash. But he remained alone in the enormous farmhouse, haunted by the ghost of his overbearing mother, whose bedroom he kept locked and undisturbed, exactly as it had been when she was alive. He also sealed off the drawing room and five more upstairs rooms, living only in one downstairs room and the kitchen. After his arrest for the killings,Gein was found mentally incompetent and thus unfit to stand trial at the time of his arrest, and was sent to the Central State Hospital (now the Dodge Correctional Institution) in Waupun, Wisconsin. Later, Central State Hospital was converted into a prison and Gein was transferred to Mendota State Hospital in Madison, Wisconsin. In 1968, Gein's doctors determined he was sane enough to stand trial; he was found not guilty by reason of insanity by judge Robert H. Gollmar and spent the rest of his life in the hospital. Gein died July 26th 1984 from respitory and heart failure.
GREEN RIVER KILLER- GARY RIDGWAY
Gary Leon Ridgway (born February 18, 1949), known as the Green River Killer, is one of the most prolific serial killers in American history. On November 30, 2001, as he was leaving a Renton, Washington factory where he worked, he was arrested for the murders of seven women whose deaths were attributed to the "Green River Killer". Four murders were linked to him through DNA and three through paint he used at his job. Two years later he pleaded guilty to 48 counts of aggravated murder, although the estimates run much higher. Ridgway has been married three times and has one son. He carried his son's photo in his wallet to lure most of his victims into his pickup truck. Ridgway confessed to more confirmed murders than any other American serial killer. Over a period of five months of police and prosecutor interviews, he confessed to 48 murders. He also confessed that he had sex with his victims' bodies before and after he murdered them, but claimed he began burying the later victims so that he would resist the urge to revisit them. Ridgway is currently serving a life sentence.
JEFF DAHMER
The well known homosexual who ate his male victims and stored their body parts. He would stab, strangle or bludgeon his victims then either eat or have sex with the corpses. Saving parts for future meals and fun. Jeffrey Dahmer was born to fundamentalist Christian parents. Some feel that repressed homosexuality may have contributed to his hatred of homosexuals.He killed seventeen men between 1978 and 1991. Most of his victims were young, homosexual or bi-sexual black men whom Dahmer subjected to sexual assaults prior to murdering. He achieved notoriety after his arrest following the discovery of his victims' decaying bodies in acid vats in his apartment, including severed heads in his refrigerator and other human body parts around his home, an altar of candles, and human skulls. Dahmer took photo's of each stage of his victims death, including the sexual explicit acts he performed on his victims at each stage. The explanation offered by Dahmer himself was that he was attempting to remove free will from his victims to create an "automaton", compliant to his wishes and acquiescent to his sexual desires. Dahmer was officially indicted on 17 murder charges, which were reduced to 15. The murder cases were already so notorious that the authorities never bothered to charge him in the attempted murder of Edwards. His trial began in January 1992. With evidence overwhelmingly against him, Dahmer pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. The court found Dahmer sane and guilty on 15 counts of murder and sentenced him to 15 life terms, totaling 957 years in prison. On November 28, 1994, Dahmer and another inmate named Jesse Anderson were beaten to death by fellow inmate Christopher Scarver with a bar from a weight machine while on work detail in the prison gym. Dahmer died from severe head trauma in the ambulance en route to the hospital.
JOHN WAYNE GACY
John Wayne Gacy was born March 17th 1942. Gacy is thought to have killed and sexually assaulted 32 boys between 1976 to his arrest in December 1978. Gacy would use his contracting business to attract young men eager for work, many of whom were subjected to rape. Thirty two of whom lost their lives. Gacy also entertained local kids dressed as a clown. John Wayne Gacy was convicted of murder with a recommendation for the death penalty. Gacy's wife divorced him in March 1976; the killings began in earnest the following month. Darrell Sampson disappeared on April 6, 1976. In 1977, David Daniel would state that Gacy offered him a ride at the bus depot, but Daniel refused. He further states that Gacy was very insistent, asking him seven times, offering marijuana as a lure.[7] Daniel is one of only two known survivors alive to describe Gacy's approach, the other being Jeffrey Ringall.No suspicion fell on Gacy until December 12, 1978, when he was investigated following the disappearance of 15-year-old Robert Piest, who was last seen with Gacy. A search of his house, by Des Plaines detective Joseph Kozenczak, revealed a number of incriminating items related to other disappearances.On December 22, 1978, Gacy went to his lawyers and confessed to 33 murders and indicated the location of 31 bodies to police — they were buried under his house and on his property. The two others he said were thrown into the nearby Des Plaines River. Gacy would often stick clothing in their mouths to muffle their screams. After he would choke them with a rope or a board as he sexually assaulted them. Gacy would also keep the bodies with him for as long as decomposition would allow. He picked up at least one of his victims at the bus station. The youngest identified victims were Samuel Stapleton and Michael Marino, both 14 years old; the oldest were Russell Nelson and James Mazzara, both 21 years old. Nine of the victims were so badly decomposed that they were never identified. The bodies were uncovered from December 1978 until April 1979, when the last known victim was found downstream in the Illinois River. On February 6, 1980, Gacy's trial began in Chicago. During the trial, he pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. However, this plea was rejected outright. On May 10, 1994, Gacy was executed at Stateville Correctional Center in Crest Hill, Illinois, by lethal injection. His last words to his lawyer in his cell were to the effect that killing him would not bring anyone back, and it is reported his last words were "Kiss my ass," which he said to a guard while he was being sent to the execution chamber. After the execution began, the lethal chemicals unexpectedly solidified, clogging the IV tube that led into Gacy's arm, and prevented any further passage. Blinds covering the window through which witnesses observed the execution were drawn, and the execution team replaced the clogged tube with a new one. Ten minutes later, the blinds were reopened and the execution resumed. It took 18 minutes to complete. Anesthesiologists blamed the problem on the inexperience of prison officials who were conducting the execution, saying that proper procedures taught in "IV 101" would have prevented the error. This apparently led to Illinois' adoption of a different method of lethal injection. On this subject, the chief prosecutor at Gacy's trial, William Kunkle, said "He still got a much easier death than any of his victims."
TED BUNDY
Ted Bundy was finally executed in Florida after numerous murders of young women in Washington, Utah, Colorado and Florida. This suave soft spoken man seemed approachable to most women and easily lured them in with his charms. He also aided in the investigation into the "Green River Killer" case.Bundy murdered scores of young women across the United States between 1974 and 1978. After more than a decade of vigorous denials, Bundy eventually confessed to 30 murders, although the actual total of victims remains unknown. Estimates range from 29 to over 100. Typically, Bundy would bludgeon his victims, then strangle them to death. He also engaged in rape and necrophilia. Bundy was arrested on August 16, 1975, in Salt Lake City, for failure to stop for a police officer. A search of his car revealed a ski mask, a crowbar, handcuffs, trash bags, an icepick, and other items that were thought by the police to be burglary tools. On June 7, 1977, in preparation for a hearing in the Caryn Campbell murder trial, Bundy was taken to the Pitkin County courthouse in Aspen. During a court recess, he was allowed to visit the courthouse's law library, where he jumped out of the building from a second-story window and escaped. In the minutes following his escape, Bundy at first ran and then strolled casually through the small town toward Aspen Mountain. He made it all the way to the top of Aspen Mountain without being detected, but then lost his sense of direction and wandered around the mountain, missing two trails that led down off the mountain to his intended destination, the town of Crested Butte. On June 13, 1977, Bundy stole a car he found on the mountain. He drove back into Aspen and could have gotten away, but two police deputies noticed the Cadillac with dimmed headlights weaving in and out of its lane and pulled Bundy over. They recognized him and took him back to jail. Bundy had been on the lam for six days. Bundy escaped from jail 2 more times until his arrest February 15th, 1978. Bundy was found guilty and sentenced to death. He was executed by electric chair on January 24th, 1989 at the age of 42.
CHARLES MANSON
Charles Milles Manson was born November 12, 1934. Manson is a convict who led the "Manson Family," a quasi-commune that arose in the U.S. state of California in the later 1960s. He was found guilty of conspiracy to commit the Tate-LaBianca murders, which members of the group carried out at his instruction. Through the joint-responsibility rule of conspiracy, he was convicted of the murders themselves.Manson is forever associated with "Helter Skelter," the term he took from the Beatles song of that name and construed as a race-based conflict that the crimes were intended to precipitate. This unusual connection with rock music linked him, from the beginning of his notoriety, with pop culture, in which he became a symbol of transgression, rebellion, evil, ghoulishness, bloody violence, homicidal psychosis, and the macabre. Ultimately, the term was used as the title of the book that prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi wrote about the Manson murders.At the time the Family began to form, Manson was an unemployed ex-convict, who had spent half his life in correctional institutions for a variety of offenses. In the period before the murders, he was a distant fringe member of the Los Angeles music industry, chiefly via a chance association with Beach Boy Dennis Wilson. After Manson was charged with the crimes, recordings of songs written and performed by him were released commercially; a number of artists have covered his songs in the decades since.Manson's death sentence was automatically reduced to life imprisonment when a decision by the Supreme Court of California temporarily eliminated the state's death penalty. California's eventual reestablishment of capital punishment did not affect Manson, who is an inmate at Corcoran State Prison.
RICHARD RAMIREZ-‘The Night Stalker’
Richard Ramirez was born the youngest of 8 children on February 28,1960 in El Paso, Texas. He was a sickly child, but in essence described as a ‘good boy’ by his father until the age of 12 when he found an idol and mentor in his older cousin-fresh from the horrors of the Vietnam War. Cousin Mike would recount gruesome stories of rape, torture, murder, and violence to Richard complete with pictures of his ‘adventures’ in Vietnam. Cousin Mike also indulged in drinking and drug use with young Richard. When Mike’s wife accused Mike of laziness-he shot her in the face-murdering her in front of Richard. For this action, Mike received a 7 year sentence. Perhaps this justified a young Ramirez’s beliefs that human-especially female’s-life is insignificant.AT 18, Ramirez discovered Satanism. Already a habitual drug user, he moved to Southern California-supporting himself with petty theft. In 1984, while attempting to rob the home of a 79 year old woman, Ramirez became irritated when nothing of value was discovered in the house. He began stabbing the sleeping woman repeatedly in her bed, slashing her throat from ear to ear. He found these acts sexually arrousing and had sex with her corpse before leaving the scene.As his killing spree progressed, many of Ramirez’s crimes weren’t linked together as there seemed to be no continuous similarities in victims and methods of murder. Most male victims were shot, while females were stabbed. His Killing Spree Terrorized Los Angeles: Ramirez's 1985 killing and rape spree continued: 1. June 27 - Ramirez raped a 6-year-old girl in Acadia. June 28 - Patty Higgins, age 32, was beaten and her throat slit. July 2 - Mary Cannon, age 75, was beaten and her throat slit. July 5 - Deidre Palmer, age 16, survived being beaten with a tire iron. July 7 - Joyce Lucille Nelson, 61, was bludgeoned to death. July 7 - Linda Fortuna, 63, was attacked and Ramirez tried to rape her, but failed. July 20 - Maxson Kneiling, 66, and his wife Lela, also 66, were shot and their corpses, mutilated. July 20, Chitat Assawahem, 31, was shot and his wife Sakima, 29, was beaten then forced to perform oral sex. Ramirez then collected $30,000 in valuables, but before leaving, he sodomized the couple's eight-year-old son. August 6 - Ramirez shot both Christopher Petersen, 38, and his wife, Virginia, 27, in the head. Both somehow survived. August 8 - Ramirez shot Ahmed Zia, 35, and raped and sodomized his wife, Suu Kyi, 28, and forced her to perform oral sex on him. One of Ramirez’s surviving victims was able to recall the license plate of his car, which was recovered and finger printed by police who circulated pictures of ‘The Night Stalker’ to a terrorized Southern California public. Ramirez is most remembered for his Satatnic imagery (a pentagram on his palm) and courtroom outbursts and horrific glare during his trial. He was duly convicted on 43 counts and was sentenced to death. He has had many Manson-like ‘groupies’ and even took a wife in 1996. He still sits on death row in San Quentin.