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One shot his grandmother in the head, murdered his grandfather, and decapitated six female hitchhikers before fulfilling his years-long fantasy of bludgeoning his own mother to death with a claw hammer and beheading her. Another slaughtered dozens of women, disposed of some of them in a meat grinder, and fed others to pigs.
It sounds like the plot of a horror movie but this is in fact, true crime. Edward Kemper and Robert William Pickton were among the world's most notorious serial killers. While we'd like to think there haven't been many, one database lists more than 5,000 confirmed serial killers - most of them from the United States. Perhaps even scarier is that experts believe hundreds, if not thousands, have gone undetected, and therefore, were never caught.
People have been sharing macabre, disturbing, and surprising facts about some of the serial killers who once roamed free. Bored Panda has put together a list of the most fascinating and creepy ones. Many of the tales might have you sleeping with one eye open, if you even manage to sleep at all.
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#1
One of the most absurdly ironic true crime moments ever involves Dennis Rader, the serial killer known as BTK.
After m*rdering at least 10 people between the 1970s and 1990s, BTK resurfaced in the early 2000s because he was angry that the public had stopped paying attention to him. He started sending taunting letters to police and local media again, basically demanding recognition.
At one point, he wanted to send the police a floppy disk containing messages. But before doing it, he actually asked them a question through one of his letters:
“Can I communicate with a floppy and not be traced to a computer? Be honest.”
The police publicly replied that it would be safe and that they couldn’t trace it.
So BTK trusted them.
He mailed the floppy disk.
The FBI checked the metadata and quickly discovered it had been used by someone connected to “Christ Lutheran Church.” The disk also contained traces pointing to a user named “Dennis.” Investigators linked it to Dennis Rader, president of the church council, and arrested him in 2005.
The funniest part is that after he was caught, Rader was reportedly genuinely offended that the police had lied to him. He apparently thought they would answer honestly because he specifically asked them to “be honest.” A serial killer basically got upset that the FBI didn’t play fair with him.
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#2
Gary Ridgway, The Green River killer had an IQ of 82 which put him near intellectually disabled. One night while closing up for work, a female coworker asked him to walk her to her car because she was afraid of getting kidnapped by The Green River Killer. Ridgway told her "don't worry, I wouldn't k**l you." She laughed it off thinking it was a joke but he was genuinely telling her the truth and confessed without being believed.
#3
When Ted Bundy worked at the Scide Center where everyone loved him, he had a co worker that brought her dog to work, he was the friendliest dog ever, but whenever he stopped by to visit her the dog would growl and get between the two of them. Other people reported the same behavior from friendly dogs but they are not as verified as the account by Ann Rule.
#4
Some guy k****d a bunch of people, obviously, and got away with it. (Golden State Killer, aka the Original Night Stalker, aka the East Area R**ist and aka the Visalia Ransacker)
Then like 20 years later all those DNA companies start up.
So does he get one done?
No.
But the police have his DNA in evidence but no matches on their forensic databases. So they get access to the databases of these companies and look for anyone with a close match and they find one. How close the match is says that this person is a 5th cousin of the serial killer. So they go through birth records and find everyone who is a 5th cousin to this person. They then eliminate all of those who are too young, wrong s*x, etc. This narrows it down to one.
So some guy gets arrested, charged and convicted of crimes he thought he got away with decades earlier because a 5th cousin he didn't even known existed wanted to know if he was part Viking or something.
#5
Jeffrey Dahmer’s neighbors called the police when they saw a bloody teenage boy running naked from his apartment. Dahmer had d*****d and was attacking the boy when he escaped. He made it to police, but then Dahmer told them the boy was drunk and the police accepted his explanation and returned him to Dahmer.
MeowZedong 51 minutes ago
The child was only 14 and had a hole drilled into his head when the police found him. They did nothing.
#6
The Zodiac Killer is actually a sitting US senator from the state of Texas.
#7
Right before he got caught, cops were stationed at bus and train stations looking for recently identified Richard Ramirez as they figured he'd be leaving L.A. but he was actually returning to L.A. from Texas so he kinda just walked past them headed the other way.
#9
The Co-Ed killer (Edmund Kemper) wrapped up his kills with his mother and her friend. He beheaded his mother and proceeded to have s*x with her head among many other obscene things. He turned himself in afterwards because there was no purpose left in his killings—they were all fueled by his hatred for his mother.
As a teenager Edmund also k****d his grandparents. Sh**ting and k*****g his grandfather so that he would not have to see what he did to his grandmother.
Edmund also was evaluated as having an IQ of 145.
Edmund has been a model prisoner throughout his imprisonment.
#10
John Wayne Gacey was sent to prison for sodomy. He was released early. His last m****r was committed the day he would have been released if he had served his full sentence. He k****d over 30 young men and boys.
#11
Toy box killer is pretty messed up when you get into the details.
More info:
The "Toy-Box Killer" was David Parker Ray, a kidnapper, torturer, and serial r*pist who operated out of a soundproof trailer near Elephant Butte from the 1970s through the 1990s. He kidnapped women, drugged them, held them captive for weeks or months, and subjected them to prolonged ab*se inside what he called his "Toy Box." He was finally caught in 1999 when one victim, Cynthia Vigil, escaped while wearing only a dog collar and chain and ran for help.
One of the strangest aspects of the case is that despite investigators suspecting dozens of m*rders, no body was ever conclusively linked to Ray. He was convicted only for kidnapping and torture-related crimes and received a sentence of over 220 years. He died of a heart attack in prison in 2002 before investigators could question him further.
Lesser-Known Facts
1. His own daughter tried to report him years before his arrest.
His daughter, Glenda Jean Ray (often called Jesse), reportedly contacted the FBI in the 1980s and claimed her father was abducting and torturing women. The allegations were considered too vague to pursue at the time.
2. He recorded a "welcome tape" for victims.
Instead of personally explaining what would happen, Ray played an audio recording to newly awakened victims. The tape calmly described their captivity and what he planned to do to them. Many investigators and true-crime followers consider it one of the most disturbing pieces of evidence ever recovered in a criminal case.
3. He may have deliberately erased victims' memories.
Investigators believed Ray used powerful sedatives and barbiturates before releasing some victims, hoping they would forget much of what happened and never report him. Several survivors only recovered memories years later.
4. The FBI recovered hundreds of personal items.
Authorities found hundreds of pieces of women's jewelry, clothing, and personal belongings. Years later, the FBI publicly released photographs of these items hoping they could be connected to unidentified victims.
5. One suspected m*rder was never charged against him.
An accomplice named Dennis Roy Yancy confessed to helping torture and kill a woman named Marie Parker and claimed Ray forced him to commit the m*rder. However, there was insufficient physical evidence to charge Ray with that killing.
6. He died at the worst possible moment for investigators.
Police planned another major interrogation session in 2002. Many hoped he might reveal victim identities or burial locations. He suffered a fatal heart attack before questioning began.
7. Nobody actually knows how many victims there were.
Depending on the source, estimates range from a handful of known survivors to 40–60 possible victims. The lack of bodies means nobody can say with certainty how many women disappeared because of him.
#12
Vlado Taneski was a Macedonian reporter who k****d his victims at night and reported on them in the morning.
#13
Peter Kurten last words before he was put to d***h "Tell me, after my head is chopped off, will I still be able to hear, at least for a moment, the sound of my own blood gushing from the stump of my neck? That would be the pleasure to end all pleasures.”.
#15
John Wayne Gacy would trick his victims into restraining themselves. He would pull out a pair of handcuffs to show off a ‘magic trick’. When he handcuffed himself, he would secretly free himself with a key.
Then his victims would handcuff themselves, wanting to do the magic trick themselves. The part that I find interesting about this is how many people fell for it. A lot of his victims were complete strangers that he lured into his house. Why would someone willingly handcuff themselves in the home of a man they just met?
#16
I got this from a YouTube channel called Mr. Ballen, a true-story teller.
A couple was hiking in the hills at night, I believe on a first date. If I remember correctly, they really weren’t too into each other at the time… And maybe even both were looking to kind of wrap this up.
At some point, they get an eerie feeling and just decided to turn around before getting to the top of the hill.
Years later, that couple is actually married and sitting in their living room, watching the news report. Ted Bundy is being interviewed, asked Did he ever just decide to let anyone live?
On TV, Bundy tells the story of how he was laying in the woods, I believe having just k****d somebody… And these two people walked up on them… And have they discovered them, he would’ve k****d them. But they just turned and walked away.
It’s a great YouTube channel… If anybody wants to check it out. He also tells some interesting stories about his days as a navy seal.
#17
Robert Pickton m******d at least 26 women, fed some of them to his pigs and then ground up their meat with the pork meat and sold it to the public.
#18
A lot of the stories of vampires are based on elizabeth batheroy and vlad the impaler, who were early serial killers. so you could say that the entire vampire mythology (dracula, castlevania, twilight, and all of that that you see in popular culture) is the mytholization of serial killers. like vampires themselves are obviously fiction, but that vampires are based on serial killers is an interesting fact. non-serial killers seem to find serial killers so interesting that they created a whole fictional universe about them.
#19
The Zodiac Killer (a white man) narrowly got away with k*****g a taxi driver in San Francisco because the police mistakenly believed the eyewitnesses said the killer was a black male.
In fact, the Zodiac was actually stopped by the police merely minutes after the m****r and asked if he'd seen anything suspicious. They didn't question him any further because they thought they were looking for a black man.
#20
Herbert Baumeister, a serial killer from Westfield, Indiana in the mid 90’s, k****d mostly gay men for years while his family was at a lake house or away and would bury them in the back of his farm property. They are still identifying the remains today, 30 years later. “The complexity and the amount of remains they have, which is over 10,000 stored, is second only to 9/11”. He is believed to have k****d dozens.
#21
I think I'd go with the entirety of Randy Kraft's career, which seems like it's from a Cormac McCarthy novel or a bad version of a Thomas Harris novel. But in particular, his arrest event, in which he was drunk driving - and possibly on pills- swerving all over the road, with Terry Gabrel's body in his car, Polaroids of victims under the floor mats. He was pulled over and jumped out of the car, dumping out a beer, failed a field sobriety test, and said something about his friend having too much to drink, and he was just asleep.
#23
Gary Ridgeway. (The Green River Killer) Just... everything about him. He was arrested when I was 14, and news about him leading cops to bodies was in the news for a *while*...
Ted Bundy volunteered at a s*****e hotline and often worked with Ann Rule. She wrote "The Killer Beside Me." Apparently, I met her when I was little because I was home from school (I think this was the time I got pushed down and hit my head on the blacktop, and ended up needing stitches. I had to stay home a few days.) BUT... Ann Rule was signing books at a shop near us, and my mother took me with her.
So... I live near-ish to Seattle. A lot of my childhood memories have been polluted knowing what happened at some of these places. An ice cream shop we used to go to was the site of a brutal attack by Randall Woodfield, for example. There are a lot of the famous ones from around here.
#24
I think I'll drop a much lesser known one...
The Ranes Brothers, Larry and Danny, were indeed two biological brothers who both became serial killers independently from one another (everybody out of the gene pool... lol). Danny Ranes was such a typical sadistic misogynist in his motivations and M.O., he's barely worth mentioning beyond the interest of there being 2 independent serial killers from one nuclear family. His brother Larry, on the other hand?
Larry k****d men, generally, and with a different M.O. - and he was much less organized and coherent. In fact, when Larry Ranes was caught and brought to trial, multiple court psychiatrists found that, while fit to stand trial, he fit the legal definition of "insane," which was his initial plea. But people wanted blood, not empathy, so they *disregarded* multiple testimonies about his mental state and CPTSD from their a*****e father (which he admitted he was using the men as substitutes for), and kept finding him guilty in repeated trials. Eventually, on like his 3rd or 4th trial, he agreed to change to a guilty plea on one condition: he be allowed a legal name change.
#25
During the Autumn of Terror in 1888, over 200 letters were sent to the police and press claiming to be from Jack the Ripper. While most experts consider them hoaxes crafted by journalists to sensationalize the m*rders, these letters cemented the killer's terrifying legacy.
Historically, Scotland Yard authorities viewed the letters as elaborate press hoaxes designed to drive up newspaper sales. Forensic linguistic studies since that time support this, finding distinct similarities between the letters that suggest a common journalist penned them.
Despite reports in the decades since the m*rders took place, the actual identity of JtR still remains unknow.
#26
Israel Keyes would bury "k**l kits" of gloves, masks, rope, tape, etc. all around the country years in advance of his kills.
#27
John Wayne Gacy would dress up as a clown and do children's birthday parties meanwhile he has young d**d men in a crawl space in his home ...
#28
That Jeffrey Dahmer had a fondness for Return of the Jedi, and also made some of his victims watch Exorcist III (which isn't as far fetched), one of the best scenes in horror in that one.
#29
Jeffrey Dahmer stated that human flesh tastes like beef during an interview.
Jeffrey Dahmer has a younger brother named David who graduated from a medical school with a doctorate and changed his name before leaving the state to avoid all ties or connections to the shame of his older brother.
#30
I know he's technically not a serial killer, but my favorite fact as a Chicagoan especially is that Al Capone is the reason we have expiration dates printed on perishable food!! His goddaughter or niece once ate moldy bread or something (forgive me I'm going off memory and after an 11 hour shift) and became violently ill and was allergic to penicillin and nearly died, so Big Al got so mad he wrote into the state about it (I wanna say there was a lawsuit as well) and thus, expiration dates on milk, eggs, bread, etc.
#31
I don’t think anything beats two cops handing Jeffrey Dahmer one of his victims back after they found the kid n**e in the streets with a hole drilled in his head and bleeding from his r****m.
Dahmer took the kid back to his apartment to finish the job and both cops were eventually promoted. One of them became head of the Milwaukee police union.
#32
Absolutely everything about Albert Fish. The fact that he wrote a letter to the mother of the child he k****d and ate, that he stuck 29 needles in his groin, all his strange and horrific fetishes. That he asked his children to hit him with a stick... Everything, really.
#33
William Bonin (The Freeway Killer) Randy Craft (The Scoreboard Killer) Lawrence Bittaker (The Toolbox Killer), And Doug Clark (The Sunset Strip Killer) All played board games together while incarcerated in prison.
Edmund Kemper and Herbert Mullin were both active in the same area and were incarcerated together in the same prison. Kemper apparently thought Mullin was annoying and would splash water on him to make sure he behaved and would award him with peanuts if he was good.
Kenneth Bianchi (One of the Hillside Stranglers) k****d two girls in Washington after fleeing Los Angeles and while incarcerated, was interviewed by a woman named Veronica Compton who was an LA play producer and tried interviewing him for her upcoming play but she ended up falling for him to the point where she tried to k**l another woman to stage another Hillside Strangler m****r to make Bianchi seem innocent and that he was framed. Compton was also incarcerated in the same prison with the Manson Family Women and Carol Bundy (who was an accomplice to Doug Clark, The Sunset Strip Killer). Apparently the two spoke to each other and Compton said Bundy terrified her.
Rodney Alcala (The Dating Game Killer), was interviewed by the police and was even a suspect of a m****r that was actually done by the Hillside Stranglers. This was before he was caught to.
Ted Bundy and Gary Ridgeway actually are sort of connected. Bundy was active in Washington like Ridgeway, then was active in Salt Lake City Utah, where ironically Gary Ridgeway was born.
I heard somewhere that Danny Rolling (The Gainsville Ripper), wanted to be a famous serial killer like Ted Bundy. His crimes also inspired Kevin Williamson to write his film Scream.
I don’t know if this statement is true but I heard it somewhere so I might as well put it down. Apparently one of the surviving victims of David Parker Ray (The Toybox Killer), was related to a victim that was m******d by Samuel Little (the most prolific known serial killer in American History).
#34
Craziest for me anyway: during their k*****g years, I shopped at the same stores, went to the same coffee shops and hung out in the same neighbourhoods as w***y Pickton and his brother (who is equally if not more responsible for k*****g 50+ women and feeding them to their pigs). Friends of mine partied at piggies palace during its hayday. It's been over 20 years since w***y was arrested and it still creeps me out.
#35
Gary Ridgway (Green River Killer) made a pit stop with his son in the car to dig up and have s*x with one of his victims. Obviously not in view of his son but came back acting totally normal.
#36
John Wayne Gacy would call in tips to the police about a sighting of one of his victims so police would think they were runaways.
#37
Not sure if it's "crazy", but Leonard Lake didn't discriminate with his (and Charles Ng's) victims. People who's belongings they wanted. His next door neighbours. Lake's "best" friend. Another "best" friend of Ng's. This best friend's fiance. Lake's own brother. Then, despite k*****g people close to them with impunity for years, they eventually got caught after shoplifting a $50 vice from a hardware store. Actually, all that is crazy.
There's lots of other little crazy facts in many serial killer cases. One that instantly comes to mind is one of Dahmer's (underage) victims escaping from his apartment. And despite being incoherent, naked, and wearing handcuffs, the police who were subsequently called handed him straight back to Dahmer and left. He died that night.
Yet another could be the fact that on the day Edmund Kemper visited his psychiatrist and was declared legally sane (and therefore safe to interact with society, following his release from Atascadero State Mental Hospital), he had the head of his latest victim in the trunk of his car.
I could think of some more but I'm sure many people here will have lots of suggestions too!
#38
Marcel Petiot was a French serial killer who escaped from custody shortly after his arrest, changed his name, grew a beard, and joined an investigative team established to find him. This actually worked for about a year until he was recognized and arrested yet again.
#39
Fred and rose west r***d a girl and were ordered to pay a 20 pound fine by the court.
They went on to m****r several young girls. It could all have been prevented.
#40
Zodiac very likely gets caught after the Stine m****r if the police dispatch doesn’t incorrectly state they’re looking for a black suspect.
#41
That Paul Bernardo and Karla Holmolka, took a Polaroid of the two of them laughing and pointing at the camera. They then snuck that Polaroid into the coffin of Karla’s d**d sister, after Paul and Karla had k****d her .. they wanted her to see them laughing at her for eternity. Absolutely the most twisted evil s**t.
#42
Gein. I dunno, call me old fashioned but making lamp shades out of human skin and the heads everywhere including on the posts of his bed etc always got me. Just this weird lonely old guy that missed his mom. "Flesh is Flesh"
*shudders*.
Nathaniel 46 minutes ago
Read a book about him and, in a strange way, felt sorry for him relatively speaking. He had a rough upbringing and basically lived in isolation which let his crazy go very crazy. Once he was caught and Sent to hospital where he could establish a routine and be around people everyday, supposedly he lived a normal life. Do not bother with the Netflix drama about him, they made up so much rubbish.
#43
The Ted Bundy case. A tv documentary series I watched about the different Defense Lawyers for several killers & SK’s. It was mostly about the trauma & negative events that happened to these Lawyers. Mostly at the interactions with these killers. Their manipulation & actions. Obviously these psychopaths do not suddenly become nice normal humans just because they are caught & tried.
It came right near the end of the program about the Bundy Lawyer. The narrator said the Lawyer had experienced, years before, the mysterious disappearance of a Girlfriend ( or may have been Fiancée.) That she had never been found or the disappearance solved. The disappearance occurred in the area & timeframe of Bundy’s early activity.
It left my blood running cold at the thought.
#44
Easily Dahmer saying he would sometimes pile up all the bodies and parts he had in the shower and shower while standing on top of them.
I feel so vulnerable in the shower, I literally peek out the curtains every now and then, so the idea of just standing on a mountain of corpses in such a vulnerable place shakes me up man.
#45
BTK is the scariest one to me. After watching documentaries about him I checked all my doors and windows.
#46
Gary Ridgeway, the Green River Killer, was not into necrophilia but slowly progressed that way. They theorize that it came about as a power play and turned into a Dahmer type of mindset of having a partner who wouldn't be able to reject them.
He also brought his young son with him a couple times when he picked up pr**titutes. They went into the woods with while his son sat in the car waiting. Gary came back and told his son she decided to walk home. Another time his son was sleeping in the car when Gary decided to go dig up a corpse and have s*x with it.
#47
The one that always creeps me out is that Dennis Radar was an ADT installer and would case houses while putting up security precautions to protect them against the serial killer that was active in there town. Using the information for future prospects for his stalking.
#48
Serial killer Leonard Lakes wife was allowed to leave the cabin with several bags of videotapes and unknown other items. She came from a prominent family and a judge refused to sign anything preventing her from taking possible evidence.
She was never charged with anything even though she was on video joking(according to her) with Lake and Ng that they should k**l a coworker that she didn't like.
#49
Craziest facts, hmm.......
Matti Heikinpoika Haapoja was a Finnish serial killer in the 1800s and people wrote folk songs and stories about him and 3 plays were made about him. that was one of the earliest examples of "true crime boom".
Dennis Nilsen enjoyed music, especially prog rock, and his all time favorite song was O Superman by Laurie Anderson.
Jeffrey Dahmer was obsessed with the movie The Exorcist 3 and showed the film often to his victims.
Ted Bundy worked in the mental health care.
KFC is connected to 2 serial killers: John Wayne Gacy and Dennis Nilsen. Gacy worked in the KFC management and when body parts of Nilsen's victims were found in the sewers, he claimed they were KFC chicken.
John Wayne Gacy got into the photo shaking hands with the president's wife.
How Fritz Haarmann k****d his victims was crazy and disturbing: biting their throats and Adam's apples.
#50
Larry Eyler, from my hometown of 16,000 people, was one of the most prolific (at least 21) but least known American serial killers (most likely due to his victims being homosexual) so the local and state police arguably never put much effort into finding and stopping him.
The little town of Crawfordsville where Larry was born and raised is also the hometown of James Hellwig (The Ultimate Warrior), Joe Allen (one of the first space shuttle astronauts), Will Shortz (editor of the New York Times crossword puzzle), and where D**k and Jerry Van D**e both went to high school.
#51
I think it’s crazy that the only reason Dennis Radar got caught was because he wrote letters to police and newspapers taunting them, he sent a floppy disc that was traced back to him.
#52
There are thousands of serial killers out there who have not and will never be caught. Spooky.
#53
There is a bar in Bellingham WA that suposedly had three different serial killers hanging out there.
#55
Fred West, the Cromwell Street serial killer, who probably k****d over 15 people (with his wife Rose) was caught because he made jokes about the m****r of his daughter Heather. His children, while in care, repeated the jokes about their sister being “under the patio” in front of a social worker who informed police.
Fred was arrested, confessed to the m****r but probably told police the wrong burial place in his garden. The police found a different body, and then proceeded to find 11 more. Had they found Heather’s body first, Fred and Rose might have got away with, and Rose could possibly have committed more m*rders.
#56
Peter Sutcliffe used special “underwear” (a men’s sweater with padded elbows in which he’d stick his legs through the arms holes) so his knees wouldn’t get tired when he attacked women.
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Forrest Hobbs 1 hour ago
Sickening. Stop this, please. Serial killers? They exist. Anyone wanting to know more can head towards those websites that concentrate on such things. Why put this sort of stuff on BP? It's just horrible. I come here to escape the horrors of the world.
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Forrest Hobbs 1 hour ago
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