Serial Killers
The serial killers who terrorized towns and cities, from the ones caught to the ones never named.
-
H.H. Holmes: The Murder Castle at the Edge of the 1893 World’s Fair
As Chicago dazzled the world at the 1893 World’s Fair, a charming swindler ran a strange building the papers would call the “Murder Castle.” He confessed to 27 murders. The truth historians have untangled is smaller than the legend —… Continue reading
-
The Monster of Florence: Italy’s Most Notorious Unsolved Serial Killings
Between 1968 and 1985, couples in the dark hills around Florence were shot by a phantom the press called Il Mostro. The same pistol tied sixteen victims to one hand. Italy sent men to prison — but never truly found… Continue reading
-
John Wayne Gacy: The Killer Clown and the Crawl Space Under the Suburbs
To his neighbors, John Wayne Gacy was a friendly contractor who dressed as a clown for children’s parties. Beneath his ordinary Chicago house, investigators found the remains of dozens of young men — hidden, for years, in plain sight. Continue reading
-
The Night Stalker: How Richard Ramirez Terrorized California Through Unlocked Windows
Between 1984 and 1985, a killer climbed into California homes at night and struck without pattern — any age, any neighborhood. The newspapers called him the Night Stalker. In the end, an angry crowd in East LA caught what the… Continue reading
-
Jack the Ripper: The Whitechapel Murders That Invented the Modern Serial Killer
In the autumn of 1888, a killer butchered at least five women in the foggy slums of Whitechapel, taunted police with letters signed “Jack the Ripper,” and vanished. More than a century later, his name is still the most debated… Continue reading
-
The Texarkana Moonlight Murders: The Phantom Killer of 1946 Who Emptied a Town
For ten weeks in the spring of 1946, a masked attacker terrorized the small town of Texarkana on the Texas-Arkansas border. He killed five people, wounded three more, and emptied the city’s lover’s-lane roads of every young couple who dared… Continue reading
-
The Toolbox Killers: The 1979 Audio Tapes That Veteran FBI Agents Refused to Play Twice
Five teenage girls were murdered by two ex-convicts in the hills above Los Angeles in the summer and fall of 1979. The killers recorded one of the attacks on audio cassette. Forty-seven years later, those tapes are still locked in… Continue reading
-
Israel Keyes: The Killer Who Buried His Kits in Advance
He flew to a city he had never lived in, rented a car, drove for hours, and dug up a buried kit of weapons and tools he had hidden years earlier. He chose his victims at random. He used cash.… Continue reading
-
BTK: The Killer Who Couldn’t Stop Talking
For seventeen years, Dennis Rader murdered ten people in Wichita and slipped back into the life of a compliance officer, scout leader, and church council president. He stopped for thirteen years. Then in 2004, for reasons no one fully understands,… Continue reading
-
The Zodiac Killer: The Cipher Murders That Outlived Their Author
Between 1968 and 1969, a man calling himself Zodiac murdered at least five people in Northern California. He sent the newspapers letters in code. One of his ciphers took fifty-one years to crack. He has never been identified. The case… Continue reading
