1. Jack the Ripper
Number of victims: Around 5
Final result: Never identified or caught
Jack the Ripper is by far the most infamous serial killer of all time. There are many serial killers who have a higher count of victims than him but what makes him unique is the fact that very little is known about him.
Jack the Ripper was a proficient and strategic serial killer who managed to mask his identity even from the famous Scotland Yard police force. He was largely active in the Whitechapel district of London in 1888, which is why he is also sometimes referred to as the "Whitechapel Murderer."
Jack the Ripper targeted female sex workers, who he considered easy targets because they lived near the slums, which had less of a police presence. What made the murders so gruesome was the fact that he mutilated the corpses in grotesque fashion.
The murder of Mary Jane Kelly was the most barbaric of all his acts. Her body was mutilated beyond recognition with her face hacked away. Her intestines were removed and placed beneath her head. Her breasts were cut off and her heart was also missing from the crime scene.
2. Richard Ramirez: The Night Stalker
Number of victims: 14
Final result: Died of cancer while on death row
Richard Ramirez was an American serial killer, rapist, and burglar who was born in Texas in 1960. He became a heavy drug user and developed an interest in Satanism. Known as the "Night Stalker," Ramirez was active between 1984-1985.
As a boy, Ramirez spent time with and idolized his cousin Mike, a Vietnam veteran. However, cousin Mike had an obsession with violence against women and showed little Richard pictures of women he had killed in Vietnam.
Eventually, he shot his wife in full view of Ramirez, who was just 13 at the time. This impacted Ramirez, who became obsessed with violence, though there were many factors influencing his turn to darkness.
Ramirez killed a total of 14 people and tortured dozens more before being captured in 1985. His killing spree of brutal murders, rape, and robberies lasted a total of 14 months.
In the murder of Vincent Zazzara and his wife Maxine, Ramirez shot the husband and then brutally assaulted the wife by stabbing her to death. He then gouged out Maxine Zazzara's eyes. He never felt remorse, and when he was sentenced to death by gas chamber, he replied:
“Hey, big deal. Death always comes with the territory. I’ll see you in Disneyland.”
3. Ahmad Suradji: The "Sorcerer"
Number of victims: 42
Final result: Death by firing squad
Ahmad Suradji was an Indonesian serial killer who was known as "The Sorcerer." He is said to have murdered 42 people between 1986-1997. The most disturbing aspect was his motive and method of killing his victims.
During a dream, he claimed, his late father had informed him that drinking the saliva of 70 dead young women would turn him into a mystic healer. Since it would take too long to find 70 women who died young, he started murdering young girls.
He claimed himself to be a shaman and many women came to him seeking riches and beauty. After being paid, he would take them to a sugarcane field and bury them waist deep claiming it to be part of the ritual.
Then he strangled them and drank their saliva. He would then bury the decomposing body with their head facing his house, which he claimed would give him more power. He was sentenced to death by firing squad on July 10, 2008.
4. Tsutomu Miyazaki. The Human Dracula
Number of victims: 4
Final result: Hanged
Tsutomu Miyazaki was born prematurely, which left him with deformed hands. Due to this, he was bullied in school and his grades began to drop. He developed an inferiority complex and found it hard to socialize. His mind became so warped that he began abducting and murdering young girls between 1988 and 1989. He was known as the "Little Girl Murderer" and "Dracula."
On August 22, 1988, he abducted a four-year-old girl named Mari Konno. He strangled her to death and molested her corpse, then left the corpse to rot before returning back to remove some of her body parts.
In addition to his sadistic violence, Miyazaki also seemed to delight in further traumatizing and terrifying his victims' families. He would start by making silent phone calls to them and then escalated to sending the girls' ground-up bones, teeth, and pictures to the family with a postcard containing chilling messages, such as: "Mari. Cremated. Bones. Investigate. Prove."
All four of his victims were between the ages of four and seven. After strangling them, he engaged in necrophilia. He also drank the blood of one of his victims and ate a part of her hand. Miyazaki was finally apprehended while trying to molest a girl in a park. Even after his capture, he appeared calm and collected. Miyazaki was executed by hanging on June 17, 2008.
5. John Wayne Gacy: "Pogo the Clown"
Number of victims: 33–34
Final result: Lethal injection
John Wayne Gacy was an American serial killer and rapist who murdered at least 33 teenage boys and young men between 1972 and 1978 in Cook County, Illinois. By day, he was a clown performer at children's parties.
Gacy lured his victims with the promise of construction work and then sexually assaulted and murdered them, usually by asphyxiation or strangulation. To his victims, he often referred to himself as "Pogo the Clown."
Like many serial killers, Gacy had an abusive father and felt alienated as a child. He worked as a fast food chain manager in the 1960s and organized social gatherings in which he worked as a clown.
On May 10, 1968, Gacy was charged with sexual assault and arrested. Police then found that he had buried a total of 27 bodies under his house. He was found guilty and sentenced to death by lethal injection on May 10, 1994.
6. Ed Gein: "The Butcher of Plainfield"
Number of victims: 10+
Final result: Respiratory and heart failure due to cancer
Edward Theodore Gein was a murderer and body snatcher who was also known as the "Butcher of Plainfield". He confessed to killing Mary Hogan in 1954 and Bernice Worden in 1957. It was also found that he had exhumed corpses from local graveyards to make artifacts from the bones and skin.
When police entered his house, they found Worden's decapitated body hanging upside down by her legs—all her internal organs removed. There were also many human bones, bowls made of human skulls, masks made from the skin of heads, fingernails, etc. He was found to be mentally unstable and sent to a mental asylum, where he died of cancer on July 26, 1984.
7. The Zodiac Killer
Number of victims: 5–37
Final result: Never caught
The Zodiac killer was active in Northern California during the late 1960s. He is known to have killed at least five people, but this number is almost certainly higher and investigators believe the still-unknown perpetrator could have had as many as 37 victims.
The Zodiac Killer's first attack took place on December 20, 1968, when David Faraday and his girlfriend Betty Lou Jensen were shot dead near their car. There was no motive for the killings and the police could not identify the suspect.
The name "zodiac" originated from the killer's bizarre practice of sending ciphers and encrypted messages to the police and media. In 2020, after 51 years of eluding researchers and cryptographers, one of the baffling riddles was finally deciphered. It read:
“I hope you are having lots of fun in trying to catch me that wasn’t me on the TV show which brings up a point about me I am not afraid of the gas chamber because it will send me to paradice all the sooner because I now have enough slaves to work for me where everyone else has nothing when they reach paradice so they are afraid of death I am not afraid because I know that my new life is life will be an easy one in paradice death.”
The police were able to generate a sketch of the Zodiac killer from eyewitnesses, but he was never caught.
8. Ted Bundy
Number of victims: 30+
Final result: Execution by electrocution
Theodore Robert Bundy was an American serial killer, rapist, and burglar who assaulted and murdered over 30 young women. Ted Bundy's killing spree started around 1974. He lured his victims to his car by feigning injury.
He also used his charm to exploit women into trusting him. He would take them to a secluded spot, overpower and kill them. He sometimes revisited the body several hours at a time to perform sexual acts on the decomposing corpse despite the stench.
During his trial, he was something of a celebrity because of his "charm" and intelligence. He fought for years to avoid the death sentence. However, he could not escape justice forever and, on January 24, 1989, he was executed.
9. Harold Frederick Shipman: "Dr. Death"
Number of victims: Around 250
Final result: Suicide by hanging
Harold Frederick Shipman was a British practitioner worthy of the title "Dr. Death." He was found guilty of murdering over 218 of his patients, although the count could be as high as 250. He is also the only British doctor to have been found guilty of murdering his patients. He was also known as "The Angel of Death." He killed his victims by injecting lethal doses of painkillers.
Shipman forged the wills of his patients so that he could inherit their money and then killed them with an overdose of morphine. The local undertaker was concerned with the death rate of Shipman's patients, but the police could not find anything against Shipman.
After the death of Kathleen Grundy, a wealthy 81-year-old widow, a post-mortem medical examination revealed that she had died of a morphine overdose. He was arrested, prosecuted, and convicted, and on January 13th, 2004, he hung himself in his prison cell.
10. Jeffrey Dahmer: "The Milwaukee Cannibal"
Number of victims: 17
Final result: Murdered in prison
Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer, also was known as the "Milwaukee Cannibal," was an American serial killer active between 1978 and 1991. He is known to have raped, murdered and dismembered 17 men and boys. He is also known to have indulged in necrophilia, cannibalism and the permanent preservation of body parts.
Dahmer killed his first victim in the summer of 1978 when he was just 18 years old. He picked up a teen hitchhiker named Steven Mark Hicks, took him to his house, and strangled him to death. As his obsession with human viscera deepened, he began keeping body parts of his victims as trophies. When police found three heads and body parts in the fridge, he admitted to cooking and eating his victims.
Dahmer also tried to convert his victims into zombies. He initially tried using sleeping pills. Then he drilled holes in their skulls while they were alive and poured boiling water and acid into their skulls. He was arrested on July 22, 1991.
On the morning of November 28, 1994, Dahmer was assaulted by a fellow inmate who was serving a life sentence. He was beaten to death with a metal bar.