The Horror Behind Films





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This website is a collection of the films that based on the prototype of serial killers that used to exist in the reality. The type of film are mostly but not limited to criminal, horrific, biographical, drama, etc.

Many of the film rate is R level.
R: Restricted, Children Under 17 Require Accompanying Parent or Adult Guardian. This rating means the film contains adult material such as adult activity, harsh language, intense graphic violence, drug abuse and nudity. [resources:www.canr.msu.edu]

Our website are not responsible for any impact that will brought by the website. Children under 14 please use this website under the monitior from their accompanying parent or adult guardian. All the information presents on our website are from external resources of other websites. The detailed original resources can be found at the ending of the whole text.
About
Span of Crime: 1920–1929
Victim Number: 5-22

Charles Carl Panzram(28 June 1891 – 5 September 1930) was an American serial killer. He used aliases such as "Carl Baldwin", "Jack Allen" and "Jefferson Baldwin" in Oregon; "Jeff Davis" in Idaho and Montana; "Jefferson Davis" in California and Montana; "Jeff Rhodes" in Montana; "John King"; and "John O'Leary" in New York.

“For all of these things, I am not the least bit sorry,” Panzram explained in his autobiography, which he wrote while in prison. “I hate the whole damned human race including myself.”
“In my lifetime I have murdered 21 human beings, I have committed thousands of burgularies, robberies, larcenies, arsons and last but not least I have committed sodomy on more than 100 male human beings. For all these things I am not in the least bit sorry.”

In 1920, Panzram committed his first murders. He lured sailors in New York away from bars, got them drunk, raped and shot them and dumped their remains into the river. Back in America, Panzram claimed he shot a man dead for trying to rob him. He also asserted that he raped and killed two small boys, beating the former to death with a rock on July 18, 1922 in Salem, Massachusetts and strangling the latter later that year in New Haven, Connecticut. After his last arrest in 1928, he also claimed to have committed a murder while burglarizing homes between Baltimore and Washington, D.C. and a 1928 murder in Philadelphia. Three of these last five killings are confirmed. With the death of the Oregon prison warden, Panzram was involved in at least one murder, as an accessory before the fact, prior to 1920.

Panzram was hanged on September 5, 1930. When they put the noose around his neck, he allegedly spat in his executioner's face and declared, "I wish all mankind had one neck so I could choke it!" When asked by the executioner if he had any last words, Panzram barked, "Yes, hurry it up, you Hoosier bastard! I could kill ten men while you're fooling around!"

Reference: Murderpedia: Carl PANZRAM
Movie Name:
Killer: A Journal of Murder
IMDb Score[10]: 6.3
Rate Level: R
Released Year: 1995
Movie Type: Biography, Crime, Drama
Summary: Carl Panzram is sent to Leavenworth Prison for burglary. While there, he is brutally beaten by a guard. Neophyte guard Henry Lesser feels sympathy for Panzram, befriends him, and gets him ...[resources: IMDb]

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Movie Name:
Carl Panzram: The Spirit of Hatred and Vengeance
IMDb Score[10]: 6.4
Rate Level: Not rated
Released Year: 2011
Movie Type: Documentary, Biography, Crime
Summary: CThe true story of lifelong criminal and serial killer, Carl Panzram who wrote his autobiography for a jail guard in 1928.

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Span of Crime: 1924–1932
Victim Number: 3 confirmed, 9–100+ possible/claimed

Hamilton Howard "Albert" Fish was known for being one of the vilest pedophiles, serial child killers, and cannibals of all time. After his capture he admitted to molesting more than 400 children and torturing and killing several of them, though it wasn't known if his statement was true.1 He was also known as the Gray Man, the Werewolf of Wysteria, the Brooklyn Vampire, the Moon Maniac, and The Boogey Man.

Fish was a small, gentle-looking man who appeared kind and trusting, yet once alone with his victims, the monster inside him was unleashed, a monster so perverse and cruel that his crimes seem unbelievable. He eventually was executed and, according to rumors, turned his execution into a fantasy of pleasure.

On March 11, 1935, Fish's trial began, and he pleaded innocent by reason of insanity. He said voices in his head told him to kill children and commit other horrendous crimes. Despite the numerous psychiatrists who described Fish as insane, the jury found him sane and guilty after a 10-day trial. He was sentenced to die by electrocution.

On January 16, 1936, Fish was electrocuted at Sing Sing prison in Ossining, New York, reportedly a process Fish looked upon as "the ultimate sexual thrill," though later that assessment was dismissed as rumor.

Reference: Biography of Albert Fish, Serial Killer
Movie Name:
Albert Fish: In Sin He Found Salvation
IMDb Score[10]: 5.7
Rate Level: Not rated
Released Year: 2007
Movie Type: Documentary, Biography, Crime
Summary: lbert Fish, the horrific true story of elderly cannibal, sadomasochist, and serial killer, who lured children to their deaths in Depression-era New York City. Distorting biblical tales, Albert Fish takes the themes of pain, torture, atonement and suffering literally as he preys on victims to torture and sacrifice. Includes interviews with artist and Odditorium owner, Joe Coleman, and true-crime author, Katherine Ramsland, Ph.D. [resources: IMDb]

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Movie Name:
The Gray Man
IMDb Score[10]: 6
Rate Level: R
Released Year: 2007
Movie Type: Biography, Crime, Thriller
Summary: In a film based on actual events, Albert Fish (Patrick Bauchau) visits a teen boy seeking a job and offers him work at a county house in upstate New York. Then, with the blessing of the family, Fish takes the boy's younger sister, Grace Budd (Lexi Ainsworth), to what he says is a family celebration. Fish kills the girl but escapes, until police Detective Will King (Jack Conley), prompted by an anonymous tip, closes in on Fish, uncovering evidence that Grace was not his only victim.[resources: Google]

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Span of Crime: 1936–1938
Victim Number: 2-20

Joseph D. (Joe) Ball (January 6, 1896 – September 24, 1938) was an American serial killer, sometimes referred to as "The Alligator Man", the "Butcher of Elmendorf" and the "Bluebeard of South Texas". He is said to have killed at least 20 women in the 1930s. His existence was long believed to be apocryphal, but he is a familiar figure in Texas folklore.

After serving on the front lines in Europe during World War I, Ball started his career as a bootlegger, providing illegal liquor to those who could pay. After the end of Prohibition, he opened a saloon called the Sociable Inn in Elmendorf, Texas. He built a pond that contained five alligators and charged people to view them, especially during feeding time; the food consisted mostly of live cats and dogs.

After a while women in the area were reported missing, including barmaids, former girlfriends and his wife. When two Bexar county sheriff's deputies came to question him in 1938, Ball pulled a handgun from his cash register and killed himself with a bullet through the heart (some sources report that he shot himself in the head). If he were tried and convicted of the murders, he would have surely been sent to the electric chair.

A handyman that conspired with Ball, Clifford Wheeler, admitted to helping Ball get rid of the bodies of two of the women he had killed. Wheeler led them to the remains of Hazel Brown and Minnie Gotthard. Wheeler told authorities that Ball murdered at least 20 other women, but the alligators had disposed of any evidence. There has never been any firm evidence that the alligators actually ate any of his victims.

Reference: Murderpedia:Joseph D. BALL
Movie Name:
Eaten Alive
IMDb Score[10]: 5.5
Rate Level: R
Released Year: 1976
Movie Type: Horror, Thriller
Summary: A psychotic redneck, who owns a dilapidated hotel in rural East Texas, kills various people who upset him or his business, and he feeds their bodies to a large crocodile that he keeps as a pet in the swamp beside his hotel.[resources: IMDb]

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Span of Crime: 1943 - 1953
Victim Number: 8+

John Reginald Halliday Christie(April 8, 1899–July 15, 1953) was an English serial killer active in the 1940s and 1950s. He was arrested, tried and hanged for murder in 1953.

Prior to his arrest, he was involved in another previous murder trial: As a principal witness for the Crown. His fellow tenant Timothy Evans was accused of the murders of his own wife and child, and subsequently convicted of, and executed for, the murder of the baby; many critics have speculated that Christie committed the murders and framed Evans for them.

Others have suggested that there could have been two separate murderers living in the same shared house at the same time. Mr Justice Brabin stated in 1966 that it was "more probable than not" that Evans killed his wife and that he did not kill his daughter Geraldine. While neither Christie's nor Evans' innocence or guilt concerning these particular crimes have ever been conclusively proven, the case sparked massive public outrage, and contributed to the suspension of the death penalty in Britain in 1965.

Reference: Murderpedia:John Reginald CHRISTIE
Movie Name:
10 Rillington Place
IMDb Score[10]: 7.6
Rate Level: GP
Released Year: 1971
Movie Type: Biography, Crime, Drama
Summary: A seemingly model citizen living in mid-century London, John Christie (Richard Attenborough) is actually a killer. Masquerading as a doctor, he convinces guileless women that he can cure whatever might ail them, and when they follow him to his home, he chokes them to death and buries them in a makeshift graveyard. Based on a series of real-life killings, the story follows John as he cons a pregnant bride (Judy Geeson) and wonders if he might have found a scapegoat in her husband (John Hurt).[resources: Google]

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Span of Crime: 1946
Victim Number: 5 killed, 3 injured

Another name is called: Texarkana Moonlight Murders, real killer have never been found. The term coined by the news media, were a series of unsolved murders and other violent crimes committed in and around Texarkana in the spring of 1946 by an unidentified serial killer known as the "Phantom Killer" or "Phantom Slayer".[1] The killer is credited with attacking eight people within ten weeks, five of whom were killed.

The attacks happened on weekends between February 22, 1946 and May 3, 1946. The first two victims, Jimmy Hollis and Mary Larey, survived. The first double-murder, which involved Richard Griffin and Polly Ann Moore, happened four weeks later. The second double-homicide, involving Paul Martin and Betty Jo Booker, occurred exactly three weeks after the first murders. Finally, almost exactly three weeks later, Virgil Starks was killed and his wife, Katie, was severely wounded. The Texas Rangers came in to investigate, including the famous M. T. "Lone Wolf" Gonzaullas.

The murders sent the town of Texarkana into a state of panic throughout the summer. At dusk, city inhabitants heavily armed themselves and locked themselves indoors while police patrolled streets and neighborhoods. Although many businesses lost customers at night, stores sold out of guns, ammunition, locks, and many other protective devices. Several rumors began to spread, including that the killer was caught, or that a third and even fourth double-homicide had been committed. Most of the town hid in fear inside their houses or hotels, sometimes even leaving town. Some youths took matters into their own hands by trying to bait the Phantom so they could kill him. After three months without Phantom attacks, the Texas Rangers slowly and quietly left town to keep the Phantom from believing he was safe to strike again. The murders were reported nationally and internationally by several publications

Reference: WIKI:Texarkana Moonlight Murders
Movie Name:
The Town That Dreaded Sundown
IMDb Score[10]: 6.1
Rate Level: R
Released Year: 1976
Movie Type: Crime, Drama, Horror
Summary: A hooded madman stalks the lovers' lanes of Texarkana in this fact-based account of a 1946 killing spree.[resources: Google]

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Movie Name:
The Town That Dreaded Sundown
IMDb Score[10]: 5.6
Rate Level: R
Released Year: 2014
Movie Type: Horror, Mystery, Thriller
Summary: The long gone serial killer seemingly returned again.[resources: IMDb]

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Movie Name:
Murder in the Moonlight
Amazon[5]: 2.8
Rate Level: PG-13
Released Year: 2018
Movie Type: Documentary
Summary: Investigators, researchers and witnesses explore the crimes that had Texarkana locking the doors and nailing the windows shut in 1946. This true story inspired urban legends that to this day remain unsolved. [resources: Google]

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Span of Crime: 1949 - 1983
Victim Number: 5

Richard Kuklinski (April 11, 1935 – March 5, 2006) was a convicted murderer and notorious contract killer. He worked for several Italian-American crime families, and claimed to have murdered over 200 people over a career that lasted thirty years. He was the older brother of the convicted rapist and murderer Joseph Kuklinski.

Kuklinski claimed that he committed his first murder in 1949 at the age of 13 or 14, using a closet clothes-hanging rod to bludgeon a neighborhood boy who had bullied and teased him. He said he immediately ran back to his apartment and though the boy's body was discovered soon afterwards, the police never connected the murder to him. Kuklinski later told Philip Carlo a more dramatic version of the story, in which after killing the boy, he stole a car, drove the body to the New Jersey Pine Barrens, removed the teeth and fingertips to make identification more difficult, and then dumped the body in a frozen pond. By the mid-1950s, he had earned a reputation as an explosive pool shark who would beat or kill those who annoyed him.

In the mid-1960s, Kuklinski began working at a Manhattan film lab. Through the lab he had access to master copies of popular films, and he began making bootleg copies of Disney cartoons which he could then sell on. Kuklinski discovered there was a lucrative market for tapes of pornographic movies too; copying and distributing pornography became a regular source of income for him. Several of his known murder victims were men he had met through trafficking pornography and drugs. He also headed a gang which specialised in stealing brand new Corvettes, and carrying out burglaries. He was once arrested for passing a bad check, the only crime he was charged with prior to his arrest for murder.[36] He was photographed and fingerprinted, but the charges were dropped when he agreed to pay back the money owed. Kuklinski said he supplemented his income by working as a freelance contract killer.

Reference: WIKI: Richard Kuklinski
Movie Name:
The Iceman
IMDb Score[10]: 6.8
Rate Level: R
Released Year: 2012
Movie Type: Biography, Crime, Drama
Summary: The story of Richard Kuklinski, the notorious contract killer and family man. When finally arrested in 1986, neither his wife nor daughters had any clue about his real profession. [resources: IMDb]

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Span of Crime: 1954-1968
Victim Number: 2-9

Edward Theodore Gein also be called the Butcher of Plainfield. He was an American murderer and body snatcher. His crimes, which he committed around his hometown of Plainfield, Wisconsin, garnered widespread notoriety after authorities discovered Gein had exhumed corpses from local graveyards and fashioned trophies and keepsakes from their bones and skin.

After police found body parts in his house in 1957, Gein confessed to killing two women: tavern owner Mary Hogan in 1954, and a Plainfield hardware store owner, Bernice Worden, in 1957. Initially found unfit to stand trial, following confinement in a mental health facility, he was tried in 1968 for the murder of Worden and sentenced to life imprisonment, which he spent in a mental hospital.

The body of Bernice Worden was found in Gein's shed; her head and the head of Mary Hogan were found inside his house. Robert H. Gollmar, the judge in the Gein case, wrote: "Due to prohibitive costs, Gein was tried for only one murder—that of Mrs. Worden."

With fewer than three murders attributed, Gein does not meet the traditional definition of a serial killer. Regardless, his real-life case influenced the creation of several fictional serial killers, including Leatherface from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Norman Bates from Psycho and Buffalo Bill from The Silence of the Lambs.

Reference: Murderpedia: Edward Theodore GEIN
Movie Name:
Psycho
IMDb Score[10]: 8.5
Rate Level: R
Released Year: 1960
Movie Type: Horror, Mystery, Thriller
Summary: A Phoenix secretary embezzles forty thousand dollars from her employer's client, goes on the run, and checks into a remote motel run by a young man under the domination of his mother. [resources: IMDb]

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Movie Name:
Deranged: Confessions of a Necrophile
IMDb Score[10]: 6.4
Rate Level: R
Released Year: 1974
Movie Type: Drama, Horror, Thriller
Summary: A deranged rural farmer becomes a grave robber and murderer after the death of his possessive mother, whose corpse he keeps, among others, as his companion in a decaying farmhouse. [resources: IMDb]

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Movie Name:
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre
IMDb Score[10]: 7.5
Rate Level: R
Released Year: 1974
Movie Type: Horror
Summary: Two siblings and three of their friends en route to visit their grandfather's grave in Texas end up falling victim to a family of cannibalistic psychopaths and must survive the terrors of Leatherface and his family. [resources: IMDb]

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Movie Name:
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2r
IMDb Score[10]: 5.6
Rate Level: N/A
Released Year: 1986
Movie Type: Comedy, Horror
Summary: A radio host is victimized by the cannibal family as a former Texas Marshall hunts them. [resources: IMDb]

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Movie Name:
Leatherface: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre III
IMDb Score[10]: 5.1
Rate Level: R
Released Year: 1990
Movie Type: Horror, Thriller
Summary: A California couple and a survivalist encounter Leatherface and his family. [resources: IMDb]

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Movie Name:
The Silence of the Lambs
IMDb Score[10]: 8.6
Rate Level: R
Released Year: 1991
Movie Type: Crime, Drama, Thriller
Summary: A young F.B.I. cadet must receive the help of an incarcerated and manipulative cannibal killer to help catch another serial killer, a madman who skins his victims. [resources: IMDb]

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Movie Name:
Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation
IMDb Score[10]: 3.3
Rate Level: R
Released Year: 1995
Movie Type: Comedy, Horror, Thriller
Summary: A group of teenagers get into a car crash in the Texas woods on prom night, and then wander into an old farmhouse that is home to Leatherface and his insane family of cannibalistic psychopaths. [resources: IMDb]

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Movie Name:
Ed Gein/ In the Light of the Moon
IMDb Score[10]: 5.5
Rate Level: Not rated
Released Year: 2000
Movie Type: Biography, Crime, Drama
Summary: The story of Ed Gein, who dug up the corpses of over a dozen women and made things out of their remains before finally shooting two people to death and butchering their bodies like beef sides. [resources: IMDb]

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Movie Name:
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
IMDb Score[10]: 6.2
Rate Level: R
Released Year: 2003
Movie Type: Horror
Summary: After picking up a traumatized young hitchhiker, five friends find themselves stalked and hunted by a deformed chainsaw-wielding loon and his family of equally psychopathic killers. [resources: IMDb]

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Movie Name:
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning
IMDb Score[10]: 5.8
Rate Level: R
Released Year: 2006
Movie Type: Horror, Thriller
Summary: Before being sent to serve in Vietnam, two brothers and their girlfriends take one last road trip, but when they get into an accident, a terrifying experience will take them to a secluded house of horrors, with a chainsaw-wielding killer. [resources: IMDb]

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Movie Name:
Ed Gein: The Butcher of Plainfield
IMDb Score[10]: 3.7
Rate Level: R
Released Year: 2007
Movie Type: Crime, Drama, Horror
Summary: The twisted and murderous appetites of the notorious Ed Gein, whose depredations in his small town of Plainfield come as quite a shock to his neighbors, especially Deputy Mason, whose mother Vera and girlfriend Erica have gone missing. [resources: IMDb]

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Movie Name:
Texas Chainsaw 3D
IMDb Score[10]: 4.8
Rate Level: R
Released Year: 2013
Movie Type: Horror, Thriller
Summary: A young woman travels to Texas to collect an inheritance; little does she know that an encounter with a chainsaw-wielding killer is part of the reward. [resources: IMDb]

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Movie Name:
Leatherface
IMDb Score[10]: 5
Rate Level: R
Released Year: 2017
Movie Type: Crime, Horror, Thriller
Summary: A teenage Leatherface escapes from a mental hospital with three other inmates, kidnapping a young nurse and taking her on a road trip from hell, while being pursued by a lawman out for revenge. [resources: IMDb]

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Span of Crime: 1960–1983
Victim Number: 11

Henry Lee Lucas (August 23, 1936 – March 12, 2001) was an American convicted serial killer whose crimes spanned from 1960 to 1983. He was convicted of murdering eleven people and condemned to death for the murder of Debra Jackson, although his sentence would be commuted to life in prison in 1998. Lucas rose to infamy after confessing to more than 100 murders to the Texas Rangers and other law enforcement officials while in prison.

An investigation by the Dallas Times-Herald newspaper later discredited many of Lucas' murder confessions and resulted in a follow-up investigation by the Attorney General of Texas. The investigation concluded that Lucas was a fabulist who had falsely confessed. Lucas himself recanted the confessions as a hoax.

Lucas' case resulted in a re-evaluation in police techniques and greater awareness of false confessions. Investigators did not consider that the petty privileges – fancy steak dinners, milkshakes, TV privileges – granted by the "confession" interviews would prompt further confessions. Investigators also allowed Lucas to see case files to "refresh his memory," giving him access to knowledge only the perpetrator(s) would know.

He died of congestive heart failure in 2001.

Reference: WIKI: Henry Lee Lucas
Movie Name:
Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer
IMDb Score[10]: 7
Rate Level: Unrated
Released Year: 1986
Movie Type: Biography, Crime, Drama
Summary: Henry, a drifter, commits a series of brutal murders, supposedly operating with impunity. [resources: IMDb]

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Movie Name:
Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, Part 2/Henry II: Portrait of a Serial Killer (original title)
IMDb Score[10]: 4.8
Rate Level: R
Released Year: 1996
Movie Type: Crime, Horror, Thriller
Summary: Henry II picks up where the original (Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer) left off. Henry (Neil Giuntoli) takes a thankless job at a port-o-john company where he meets husband and wife, Kai (Ken Komenich) and Cricket (Kate Walsh). They take pity on the homeless drifter and offer him a room in the home they share with their emotionally fragile teenage niece, Louisa (Carri Levinson). Henry learns that Kai has a side job as an arsonist-for-hire, setting up phony insurance scams to make money for their boss, Rooter (Daniel Allar). He agrees to join Kai and on one of their first outings, they discover two squatters in a building that's been marked for fire. It is then that Henry introduces Kai to his life's work... [resources: IMDb]

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Movie Name:
Drifter: Henry Lee Lucas
IMDb Score[10]: 4
Rate Level: R
Released Year: 2009
Movie Type: Crime, Horror, Thriller
Summary: The true story of serial killer Henry Lee Lucas. [resources: IMDb]

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Span of Crime: 1962-1964
Victim Number: 13?

Albert Henry DeSalvoself-admitted serial killer also known as The Boston Strangler, was the subject of an FBI unlawful flight to avoid confinement investigation when he escaped from a Massachusetts state mental hospital on February 24, 1967. DeSalvo was being held at the hospital pending appeal of a life sentence for numerous rapes. Local authorities apprehended DeSalvo in Lynn, Massachusetts, the following day.

DeSalvo, a well-built 29-year-old, had a history of breaking and entering. He had spent time in prison for a bizarre series of peeping tom escapades where he would knock on ladies' doors, pretend he was a model scout and proceed to measure up the flattered woman if he was lucky enough to get in. It seemed like a harmless, albeit disturbing, pastime and DeSalvo spent 18 months in prison for such sexually oriented mischievousness.

DeSalvo had a tough upbringing. He was brought up with four siblings and his father was a wife-beating alcoholic. The boy became a delinquent and spent time in and out of prison for petty crime and violence.

Years after he had been discharged from the army for disobeying orders, he settled down and married Irmgard Beck, a girl from Germany. They lived modestly and, despite Irmgard giving birth to a handicapped child, the family managed to sustain itself. Irmgard was aware that DeSalvo was highly sexed and tried to avoid intercourse for fear of having another handicapped baby. However, a healthy boy was born and DeSalvo appeared to become a conscientious family man, liked and appreciated by colleagues and his boss. He was also known to be an outrageous braggart, which perhaps led the police to later disbelieve his claims to be the Strangler.

Reference: Albert DeSalvo Biography, WIKI: Albert DeSalvo
Movie Name:
The Strangler
IMDb Score[10]: 6.6
Rate Level: Approved
Released Year: 1964
Movie Type: Horror
Summary: An overweight lab technician with low self esteem, brought on by his dominant mother, becomes a serial killer of female nurses. [resources: IMDb]

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Movie Name:
The Boston Strangler
IMDb Score[10]: 7.1
Rate Level: Approved
Released Year: 1968
Movie Type: Crime, Drama, Mystery
Summary: A series of brutal murders in Boston sparks a seemingly endless and increasingly complex manhunt. [resources: IMDb]

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Movie Name:
Boston Strangler: The Untold Story
IMDb Score[10]: 3.8
Rate Level: R
Released Year: 2008
Movie Type: Crime, Drama, Mystery
Summary: Boston Strangler: The Untold Story is an intense true-crime thriller about Albert De Salvo, a wise cracking, small time criminal with an unrelenting sex drive, who ultimately falsely confesses to being the strangler that wreaked havoc in Boston during the early sixties. Guided by his manipulative cell mate, who knows more about the murders than he reveals, they devise a plan to gain all of the notoriety from the killings and the money from the reward. Meanwhile, Detective John Marsden, searches out the truth certain that they were not committed by one man. Fighting the bureaucracy of the day, Marsden lets his emotions get the best of him as he follows the trail of the murders.[resources: IMDb]

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Span of Crime: 1964-1989
Victim Number: 36+

Theodore Robert Bundy (né Cowell; November 24, 1946 – January 24, 1989) was an American serial killer who kidnapped, raped, and murdered numerous young women and girls during the 1970s and possibly earlier. After more than a decade of denials, before his execution in 1989 he confessed to 30 homicides that he committed in seven states between 1974 and 1978. The true number of victims is unknown and possibly higher.

Bundy was regarded as handsome and charismatic, traits that he exploited to win the trust of victims and society. He would typically approach his victims in public places, feigning injury or disability, or impersonating an authority figure, before knocking them unconscious and taking them to secluded locations to rape and strangle them. He sometimes revisited his secondary crime scenes, grooming and performing sexual acts with the decomposing corpses until putrefaction and destruction by wild animals made any further interactions impossible. He decapitated at least 12 victims and kept some of the severed heads as mementos in his apartment. On a few occasions, he broke into dwellings at night and bludgeoned his victims as they slept.

In 1975, Bundy was jailed for the first time when he was incarcerated in Utah for aggravated kidnapping and attempted criminal assault. He then became a suspect in a progressively longer list of unsolved homicides in several states. Facing murder charges in Colorado, he engineered two dramatic escapes and committed further assaults in Florida, including three murders, before his ultimate recapture in 1978. For the Florida homicides, he received three death sentences in two separate trials. Bundy was executed in the electric chair at Florida State Prison in Raiford, Florida on January 24, 1989.

Biographer Ann Rule, who had previously worked with Bundy, described him 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." He once called himself "the most cold-hearted son of a bitch you'll ever meet." Attorney Polly Nelson, a member of his last defense team, wrote he was "the very definition of heartless evil."

Reference: WIKI: Ted Bundy Murderpedia: Theodore Robert BUNDY
Movie Name:
The Deliberate Stranger
IMDb Score[10]: 7.4
Rate Level: Not rated
Released Year: 1986
Movie Type: Crime, Drama, Thriller
Summary: Based on a true story, this film depicts the life of Theodore Robert Bundy, the serial killer. In 1974, after having murdered several young women, he leaves Seattle for Utah, where he is a ...[resources: IMDb]

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Movie Name:
American Psycho
IMDb Score[10]: 7.6
Rate Level: R
Released Year: 2000
Movie Type: Comedy, Crime, Drama
Summary: A wealthy New York City investment banking executive, Patrick Bateman, hides his alternate psychopathic ego from his co-workers and friends as he delves deeper into his violent, hedonistic fantasies. [resources: IMDb]

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Movie Name:
Ted Bundy
IMDb Score[10]: 5.8
Rate Level: R
Released Year: 2002
Movie Type: Biography, Crime, Drama
Summary: Ted Bundy (Michael Reilly Burke) is a seemingly well-adjusted law student with a bright future ahead. Intelligent and good-looking, Ted has little trouble earning the affections of Lee (Boti Ann Bliss), a lovely woman who's willing to look beyond and accept her fiancé's sometimes lascivious sexual appetites. But little can prepare Lee for the brutal crimes Ted is about to commit: a six-state crime spree comprising over 30 homicides and hundreds of rapes. [resources: Google]

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Movie Name:
The Stranger Beside Me
IMDb Score[10]: 6.1
Rate Level: Not rated
Released Year: 2003
Movie Type: Biography, Crime, Drama
Summary: While working at a Seattle clinic for women in the 1970s, aspiring crime writer, Ann Rule, unwittingly becomes friends with serial killer Ted Bundy. [resources: IMDb]

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Movie Name:
The Riverman
IMDb Score[10]: 6
Rate Level: R
Released Year: 2004
Movie Type: Biography, Crime, Drama
Summary: A series of interviews are conducted with convicted serial killer Ted Bundy in hopes of gaining insight into the Green River Killer who is terrorizing Seattle. [resources: IMDb]

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Movie Name:
The Capture of the Green River Killer
IMDb Score[10]: 7.2
Rate Level: Not rated
Released Year: 2008
Movie Type: Biography, Crime, Drama
Summary: A pair of girls seeking adventure beyond the their Western Washington trailer park encounter the area's most ruthless serial killer. Based on Sheriff David Reichert's book, "Chasing the Devil: My Twenty-Year Quest to Capture the Green River Killer". [resources: IMDb]

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Movie Name:
Bundy: A Legacy of Evil/ Bundy: An American Icon
IMDb Score[10]: 3.8
Rate Level: R
Released Year: 2009
Movie Type: Crime, Drama, Horror
Summary: Based on the true story of one of history's most demented serial killers. [resources: IMDb]

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Movie Name:
Bundy and the Green River Killer
IMDb Score[10]: 3.7
Rate Level: Not rated
Released Year: 2019
Movie Type: Crime, Drama, Thriller
Summary: A police detective consults with incarcerated madman Ted Bundy to help him catch The Green River Killer. [resources: IMDb]

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Movie Name:
Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile
IMDb Score[10]: 6.6
Rate Level: R
Released Year: 2019
Movie Type: Biography, Crime, Drama
Summary: A chronicle of the crimes of Ted Bundy from the perspective of Liz, his longtime girlfriend, who refused to believe the truth about him for years. [resources: IMDb]

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Span of Crime: 1964–1973
Victim Number: 10

Edmund Emil Kemper III (born December 18, 1948) is an American serial killer and necrophile who murdered ten people, including his paternal grandparents and mother. He is noted for his large size, at 6 feet 9 inches (2.06 m), and for his high intellect, possessing an IQ of 145. Kemper was nicknamed the "Co-ed Killer" as most of his victims were female students at co-educational institutions.

Born in California, Kemper had a disturbed upbringing. His parents divorced and he moved to Montana with his abusive mother as a child before returning to California, where he murdered his paternal grandparents when he was 15. He was diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic by court psychiatrists and sentenced to the Atascadero State Hospital as a criminally insane juvenile.

Released at the age of 21 after convincing psychiatrists he was rehabilitated, Kemper was regarded as non-threatening by his future victims. He targeted young female hitchhikers during his killing spree, luring them into his vehicle and driving them to secluded areas where he would murder them before taking their corpses back to his home to be decapitated, dismembered, and violated. Kemper then murdered his mother and one of her friends before turning himself in to the authorities.

Found sane and guilty at his trial in 1973, Kemper requested the death penalty for his crimes. Capital punishment was suspended in California at the time, and he instead received eight concurrent life sentences. Since then, he has been incarcerated in the California Medical Facility. Kemper has waived his right to a parole hearing several times and has said he is happy in prison.

Reference: WIKI: Edmund Kemper
Movie Name:
Halloween
IMDb Score[10]: 7.8
Rate Level: R
Released Year: 1978
Movie Type: Horror, Thriller
Summary: Fifteen years after murdering his sister on Halloween night 1963, Michael Myers escapes from a mental hospital and returns to the small town of Haddonfield, Illinois to kill again. [resources: IMDb]

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Movie Name:
The Silence of the Lambs
IMDb Score[10]: 8.6
Rate Level: R
Released Year: 1991
Movie Type: Crime, Drama, Thriller
Summary: A young F.B.I. cadet must receive the help of an incarcerated and manipulative cannibal killer to help catch another serial killer, a madman who skins his victims. [resources: IMDb]

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Movie Name:
Kemper
IMDb Score[10]: 3.1
Rate Level: R
Released Year: 2008
Movie Type: Crime, Horror, Thriller
Summary: A film based on the true story of Ed Kemper, a serial killer who murdered ten in Santa Cruz, CA during the late sixties and early seventies. [resources: IMDb]

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Span of Crime: 1968-1969
Victim Number: 5 death, 2 injured, 20-28 dead?

Zodiac Killer, real person unknown. Zodiac Killer is the pseudonym of an unidentified American serial killer[1] who operated in Northern California from at least the late 1960s to the early 1970s. The Zodiac murdered victims in Benicia, Vallejo, Napa County, and San Francisco between December 1968 and October 1969. The killer targeted four men and three women between the ages of 16 and 29, with two of the men surviving attempted murder. The Zodiac himself claimed to have killed up to 37 victims. The killer originated the name "Zodiac" in a series of taunting letters and cards sent to the local Bay Area press. The letters included four cryptograms (or ciphers). Of the four cryptograms sent, only one has been definitively solved.

Suspects have been named by law enforcement and amateur investigators, but no conclusive evidence has surfaced. The San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) marked the case "inactive" in April 2004, but re-opened it at some point prior to March 2007. The case also remains open in the city of Vallejo, as well as in Napa County and Solano County. The California Department of Justice has maintained an open case file on the Zodiac murders since 1969.

Reference: WIKI: Zodiac Killer
Movie Name:
The Zodiac Killer
IMDb Score[10]: 4.3
Rate Level: R
Released Year: 1971
Movie Type: Horror, Mystery, Thriller
Summary: The San Francisco area is beset by a series of seemingly random murders without motive or pattern. The police are taunted by phone calls and letters. Could the maniac be the violent, truck driver, or the seemingly mild-mannered mailman, or even a cop? [resources: IMDb]

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Movie Name:
Zodiac Rapist/ Zodiac Killer
IMDb Score[10]: 4.8
Rate Level: X
Released Year: 1971
Movie Type: Adult, Comedy, Crime
Summary: A detective is on the trail of the Zodiac, a serial rapist who has been taunting him with rhyming clues and riddles. [resources: IMDb]

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Movie Name:
The Zodiac
IMDb Score[10]: 5.4
Rate Level: R
Released Year: 2005
Movie Type: Crime, Drama, Horror
Summary: An elusive serial killer known as the Zodiac terrorizes the San Francisco Bay in the late 1960s, while detectives aim to stop him before he claims more victims. Based on a true story. [resources: IMDb]

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Movie Name:
Curse of the Zodiac
IMDb Score[10]: 1.3
Rate Level: R
Released Year: 2007
Movie Type: Crime, Horror, Mystery
Summary: Though decades have passed since the multiple murderer held the state of California hostage with fear, the mystery of the identity of the Zodiac killer has never been solved. [resources: IMDb]

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Movie Name:
Zodiac
IMDb Score[10]: 7.7
Rate Level: R
Released Year: 2007
Movie Type: Crime, Drama, Mystery
Summary: In the late 1960s/early 1970s, a San Francisco cartoonist becomes an amateur detective obsessed with tracking down the Zodiac Killer, an unidentified individual who terrorizes Northern California with a killing spree. [resources: IMDb]

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Movie Name:
Awakening the Zodiac
IMDb Score[10]: 4.8
Rate Level: R
Released Year: 2017
Movie Type: Crime, Drama, Mystery
Summary: Over 40 years since the infamous Zodiac killer terrorised inhabitants of San Francisco and surrounds, three people stumble across homemade films of some of his murders. They then set out to track him down. [resources: IMDb]

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Span of Crime: 1972–1978
Victim Number: 33+

John Wayne Gacy (March 17, 1942 – May 10, 1994) was an American serial killer and sex offender known as the Killer Clown who assaulted and murdered at least 33 young men and boys. Gacy regularly performed at children's hospitals and charitable events as "Pogo the Clown" or "Patches the Clown", a personae he had devised. He was also active in his local community as a precinct captain and building contractor.

According to Gacy, all his murders were committed inside his ranch house near Norridge, a village in Norwood Park, metropolitan Chicago. Gacy would typically lure a victim to his home, dupe him into donning handcuffs on the pretext of demonstrating a magic trick, then rape and torture his captive before killing him by either asphyxiation or strangulation with a garrote. Twenty-six victims were buried in the crawl space of his home, three others were buried elsewhere on his property, and the last four were discarded in the Des Plaines River.

Gacy was convicted of the sodomy of a teenage boy in Iowa in 1968. He was sentenced to 10 years' imprisonment, but was released after 18 months. He first murdered in 1972, and at least 29 subsequent victims were killed after his divorce from his second wife in 1976. Investigation into the disappearance of Des Plaines teenager Robert Piest led to Gacy's arrest on December 21, 1978.

The conviction for 33 murders was the largest number of murders charged to one individual in United States until that time. Gacy was sentenced to death on March 13, 1980. On death row at Menard Correctional Center he spent much of his time painting. He was executed by lethal injection at Stateville Correctional Center on May 10, 1994.

Reference: WIKI: John Wayne Gacy
Movie Name:
To Catch a Killer
IMDb Score[10]: 7.4
Rate Level: Unrated
Released Year: 1992
Movie Type: Biography, Crime, Drama
Summary: "To Catch a Killer" tells the true gruesome story of John Wayne Gacy - a good friend and helpful neighbour, a great child entertainer, a respectful businessman, and a violent serial killer who raped and murdered over 30 young boys. [resources: IMDb]

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Movie Name:
Gacy
IMDb Score[10]: 4.7
Rate Level: R
Released Year: 2003
Movie Type: Biography, Crime, Drama
Summary: Model citizen, devoted father, loving husband and serial killer John Wayne Gacy - a man with over 30 dead men and boys entombed in the crawl space underneath his family house. Based on a true story. [resources: IMDb]

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Movie Name:
8213: Gacy House
IMDb Score[10]: 3.2
Rate Level: Not rated
Released Year: 2010
Movie Type: Horror, Mystery, Thriller
Summary:A group of investigators enter the former property of depraved serial killer John Wayne Gacy, hoping to find evidence of paranormal activity. Upon entering the place they set-up cameras throughout the abandoned house while going room to room with hand-held cameras, performing séances and asking for John Wayne Gacy to come forward. As the evening progresses it seems the investigators are not prepared for the horror still within the house. [resources: IMDb]

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Movie Name:
Dear Mr. Gacy
IMDb Score[10]: 6.4
Rate Level: R
Released Year: 2010
Movie Type: Crime, Drama, Horror
Summary: A chronicle of the interaction between college student Jason Moss and the object of his obsession, serial killer John Wayne Gacy. [resources: IMDb]

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Span of Crime: 1974-1991
Victim Number: 10

Dennis Lynn Rader (born March 9, 1945) is an American serial killer known as BTK or the BTK Strangler. Rader gave himself the name "BTK" (for "bind, torture, kill"). Between 1974 and 1991, Rader killed ten people in the Wichita, Kansas metro area. Rader sent taunting letters to police and newspapers describing the details of his crimes.[2][3][4] After a decade-long hiatus, Rader resumed sending letters in 2004, leading to his 2005 arrest and subsequent guilty plea. He is serving ten consecutive life sentences at El Dorado Correctional Facility in Kansas.

Rader worked for Park City as a compliance supervisor, in charge of animal control and general code enforcement. He was married with two grown children; a leader in his church, Christ Lutheran Church; a former Boy Scout leader; an Air Force veteran; and a 1979 Wichita State University graduate.

BTK sent several taunting letters to police, the media and crime victims in the 1970s, when he claimed responsibility for seven killings and suggested he be called BTK for “bind them, torture them, kill them.” The letters stopped in 1979.

Some of the letters and packages that he sent to police and media contained information about the killings that were never made public. Some included pictures of his victims, both as they lived and died, and souvenirs he had taken from crime scenes. BTK would describe the sexual thrill he got from torturing victims. He wrote that he brought some victims to the brink of death. Then he gave them some air. Then he strangled them again.

Reference: WIKI: Dennis Rader
Who is Dennis Rader aka the BTK serial killer?
Movie Name:
Feast of the Assumption: BTK and the Otero Family Murders
IMDb Score[10]: 6
Rate Level: Not rated
Released Year: 2010
Movie Type: Documentary, Crime
Summary: A living victim's personal journey through one of the most unique serial killer cases in U.S. History - the BTK murders, as told through the eyes of Charlie Otero, the oldest surviving member of the first family BTK murdered on January 15th, 1974. [resources: IMDb]

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Movie Name:
The Hunt for the BTK Killer
IMDb Score[10]: 5.8
Rate Level: R
Released Year: 2005
Movie Type: Biography, Crime, Drama
Summary: After 31 years at-large, detectives in Wichita, Kansas home in on the serial killer known as BTK. [resources: IMDb]

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Movie Name:
BTK: A Killer Among Us
IMDb Score[10]: 6.9
Rate Level: N/A
Released Year: 2019
Movie Type: Documentary, Crime
Summary: For 31 years Dennis Rader aka BTK killer was able to live a double life. This documentary chronicle's comprehensive interviews with law enforcement, victim's family members, reporters and his daughter Kerri Rawson. [resources: IMDb]

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Span of Crime: 1976-1977
Victim Number: 6 killed, 7 wounded

David Richard Berkowitz (born Richard David Falco, June 1, 1953), also known as the Son of Sam and the .44 Caliber Killer, is an American serial killer who pleaded guilty to eight separate shooting attacks that began in New York City during the summer of 1976.

Berkowitz grew up in New York City and served in the U.S. Army before beginning his crimes. Using a .44 caliber Bulldog revolver, he killed six people and wounded seven others by July 1977. As the number of victims increased, Berkowitz eluded the biggest police manhunt in the history of New York City while leaving letters that mocked the police and promised further crimes, which were highly publicized by the press. The killing spree terrorized New Yorkers and achieved worldwide notoriety.

On the night of August 10, 1977, Berkowitz was taken into custody by New York City police homicide detectives in front of his Yonkers apartment building, and he was subsequently indicted for eight shooting incidents. He confessed to all of them, and initially claimed to have been obeying the orders of a demon manifested in the form of a dog belonging to his neighbor "Sam". Despite his explanation, Berkowitz was found mentally competent to stand trial. He pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was incarcerated in state prison. He subsequently admitted that the dog-and-devil story was a hoax. In the course of further police investigations, Berkowitz was also implicated in many unsolved arsons in the city.

Intense coverage of the case by the media lent a kind of celebrity status to Berkowitz, and some observers noted that he seemed to enjoy it. In response, the New York State Legislature enacted new statutes known popularly as "Son of Sam laws", designed to keep criminals from profiting financially from the publicity created by their crimes. The statutes have remained law in New York in spite of various legal challenges, and similar laws have been enacted in several other states.

Berkowitz has been incarcerated since his arrest and is serving six consecutive life sentences. During the mid-1990s, he amended his confession to claim that he had been a member of a violent Satanic cult that orchestrated the incidents as ritual murder. A few law enforcement authorities have said that his claims might be credible, but he remains the only person ever charged with the shootings. A new investigation of the murders began in 1996 but was suspended indefinitely after inconclusive findings.

Reference: WIKI: David Berkowitz
Movie Name:
Out of the Darkness
IMDb Score[10]: 6.2
Rate Level: R
Released Year: 1985
Movie Type: Crime, Drama, Thriller
Summary: "Out of the Darkness" is a gripping thriller telling the true story of the hunt and capture of David Berkowitz, a.k.a. "Son of Sam" - the infamous serial killer who stalked New York City in the 1970s. [resources: IMDb]

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Movie Name:
Summer of Sam
IMDb Score[10]: 6.7
Rate Level: R
Released Year: 1999
Movie Type: Crime, Drama, Romance
Summary: Spike Lee's take on the "Son of Sam" murders in New York City during the summer of 1977 centering on the residents of an Italian-American Northeast Bronx neighborhood who live in fear and distrust of one another. [resources: IMDb]

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Movie Name:
Son of Sam
IMDb Score[10]: 1.8
Rate Level: R
Released Year: 2008
Movie Type: Crime, Thriller
Summary: This chilling tale recounts the late 70's in New York City, when a serial killer on the loose dubbed "Son of Sam" creates havoc. When arrested, "Son of Sam" tells police he was influenced by a satanic cult. New York would never be the same. [resources: IMDb]

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Span of Crime: 1978-1990
Victim Number: 52

Andrei Romanovich Chikatilo was a Soviet serial killer, nicknamed the Butcher of Rostov, the Red Ripper, and the Rostov Ripper, who sexually assaulted, murdered, and mutilated at least 52 women and children between 1978 and 1990 in the Russian SFSR, the Ukrainian SSR, and the Uzbek SSR. Chikatilo confessed to 56 murders and was tried for 53 of these killings in April 1992. He was convicted and sentenced to death for 52 of these murders in October 1992, although the Supreme Court of Russia ruled in 1993 that insufficient evidence existed to prove Chikatilo's guilt in 9 of these murders. Chikatilo was subsequently executed in February 1994.

Chikatilo was known as the "Rostov Ripper" and the "Butcher of Rostov" due to the fact he committed the majority of his murders in the Rostov Oblast of the Russian SFSR.

Life before start killing
Chikatilo grew up in the aftermath of the great Ukrainian famine of the 1930s, during which millions of people died and many resorted to cannibalism to survive. During his childhood, he was told constantly by his mother that he had an older brother who had been kidnapped and eaten by neighbours. The story, which cannot be verified, apparently motivated Chikatilo to cannibalize some of his victims. Chikatilo was an avid reader with a particular interest in stories that described how German prisoners were tortured by their Soviet captors during World War II.

After completing his military service, Chikatilo became a telephone engineer near Rostov-na-Donu, where he married in 1963. In 1971 he received a degree from Rostov Liberal Arts University and became a teacher. He was forced to resign his position, however, after some parents complained of sexual assaults by Chikatilo on their children.

Chikatilo began his killings in 1978, preying on young victims whom he met at rail stations and bus depots around Rostov-na-Donu and other cities to which he traveled in his various jobs. Because all the victims displayed characteristic mutilations, the police soon became aware that a serial killer was active in the region. Nevertheless, Chikatilo was able to evade detection for many years, in part because his crimes exploited weaknesses in the decaying society of the Soviet Union. Poverty made young people eager to leave their homes for the city, but, since they often had no friends or contacts there and little money, they could easily be lured into dangerous situations, and their disappearances would often go unnoticed.

In 1984 Chikatilo was arrested by a police officer who witnessed him molesting a girl at a train station. Although the briefcase he was carrying was found to contain a long knife and other suspicious instruments, police misidentified his blood type, which their tests showed did not match the type indicated by semen found at one of the crime scenes. Chikatilo was subsequently charged with theft of materials from a former employer and sentenced to one year in prison, though he was released after three months.

After his release Chikatilo resumed killing, and the subsequent police investigation, which included 24-hour surveillance of bus and train stations in one district, was intensive. In 1990 he was identified as the chief suspect in the crimes and arrested; at the time of his arrest, he was carrying a briefcase containing items similar to those in his possession when he was detained six years earlier. While in custody, Chikatilo confessed, and later he was transported to various crime scenes to demonstrate his methods to police. Convicted of 52 murders and sentenced to death, he was executed in a Moscow prison. Citizen X, a television movie based on Chikatilo’s life, was aired in 1995.

Reference: WIKI: Andrei Chikatilo
Andrei Chikatilo: SOVIET SERIAL KILLER
Movie Name:
Citizen X
IMDb Score[10]: 7.5
Rate Level: R
Released Year: 1995
Movie Type: Biography, Crime, Drama
Summary: During the 1980s, Soviet authorities hunt for a serial killer who picks his victims in railway stations and commuter trains and lures them into the woods. [resources: IMDb]

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Movie Name:
Evilenko
IMDb Score[10]: 6.2
Rate Level: Not Rated
Released Year: 2004
Movie Type: Crime, Drama, Horror
Summary: A disgraced communist schoolteacher in Kiev becomes a brutal, unfeeling serial killer. Based on the crimes of Andrei Chikatilo. [resources: IMDb]

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Span of Crime: 1978-1991
Victim Number: 17

Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer also known as the Milwaukee Cannibal or the Milwaukee Monster, was an American serial killer and sex offender who committed the murder and dismemberment of 17 men and boys from 1978 to 1991. Many of his later murders involved necrophilia, cannibalism, and the permanent preservation of body parts—typically all or part of the skeleton.

Over the course of more than 13 years, Dahmer sought out men, mostly African American, at gay bars, malls and bus stops, lured them home with promises of money or sex, and gave them alcohol laced with drugs before strangling them to death. He would then engage in sex acts with the corpses before dismembering them and disposing of them, often keeping their skulls or genitals as souvenirs. He frequently took photos of his victims at various stages of the murder process, so he could recollect each act afterward and relive the experience.

Dahmer was captured in 1991 and sentenced to 16 life terms. He was killed by fellow prison inmate Christopher Scarver in 1994.

Although he was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, schizotypal personality disorder, and a psychotic disorder, Dahmer was found to be legally sane at his trial. He was convicted of 15 of the 16 murders he had committed in Wisconsin, and was sentenced to 15 terms of life imprisonment on February 15, 1992. Dahmer was later sentenced to a 16th term of life imprisonment for an additional homicide committed in Ohio in 1978.

On November 28, 1994, Dahmer was beaten to death by Christopher Scarver, a fellow inmate at the Columbia Correctional Institution in Portage, Wisconsin.

Life before start killing
Dahmer was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on May 21, 1960, to Lionel and Joyce Dahmer. He was described as an energetic and happy child until the age of 4 when surgery to correct a double hernia seemed to effect a change in the boy. Noticeably subdued, he became increasingly withdrawn following the birth of his younger brother and the family's frequent moves. By his early teens, he was disengaged, tense and largely friendless.

Dahmer claims that his compulsions toward necrophilia and murder began around the age of 14, but it appears that the breakdown of his parents' marriage and their acrimonious divorce a few years later may have been the catalyst for turning these thoughts into actions.

By the time of his first killing, Dahmer's alcohol consumption had spun out of control. He dropped out of Ohio State University after one quarter term, and his recently remarried father insisted that he join the Army. Dahmer enlisted in late December 1978 and was posted to Germany shortly thereafter.

His drinking problem persisted, and in early 1981, the Army discharged him. Although German authorities would later investigate possible connections between Dahmer and murders that took place in the area during that time, it is not believed that he took any more victims while serving in the Armed Forces.

Following his discharge, Dahmer returned home to Ohio. An arrest later that year for disorderly conduct prompted his father to send Dahmer to live with his grandmother in Wisconsin, but his alcohol problem continued and he was arrested the following summer for indecent exposure. He was arrested once again in 1986 when two boys accused him of masturbating in front of them. He received a one-year probationary sentence.

Reference: WIKI: Jeffrey Dahmer
Jeffrey Dahmer Biography
Movie Name:
The Secret Life: Jeffrey Dahmer
IMDb Score[10]: 5.6
Rate Level: N/A
Released Year: 1993
Movie Type: Biography, Crime, Drama
Summary: Based on the life of notorious serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, who murdered 17 men and ate many of them before he was caught in 1991. [resources: IMDb]

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Movie Name:
Dahmer
IMDb Score[10]: 5.6
Rate Level: R
Released Year: 2002
Movie Type: Biography, Crime, Drama
Summary: Biopic about notorious American serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, taking place in both the past and the present. [resources: IMDb]

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Movie Name:
Raising Jeffrey Dahmer
IMDb Score[10]: 4
Rate Level: R
Released Year: 2006
Movie Type: Biography, Crime, Drama
Summary: Based on the true story of the serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, the events within the family behind, and leading up to his capture. [resources: IMDb]

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Movie Name:
The Jeffrey Dahmer Files
IMDb Score[10]: 6.4
Rate Level: Not rated
Released Year: 2012
Movie Type: Documentary, Biography, Crime
Summary: An experimental documentary that uses archival footage, interviews, and fictionalized scenarios to tell the story of the people around Jeffrey Dahmer, during the summer of his arrest in 1991. [resources: IMDb]

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Movie Name:
My Friend Dahmer
IMDb Score[10]: 6.2
Rate Level: R
Released Year: 2017
Movie Type: Biography, Drama
Summary: A young Jeffrey Dahmer struggles to belong in high school. [resources: IMDb]

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Span of Crime: 1978-1983
Victim Number: 12-15

Dennis Andrew Nilsen (23 November 1945 – 12 May 2018) was a Scottish serial killer and necrophile who murdered at least twelve young men between 1978 and 1983 in London, England. Convicted at the Old Bailey of six counts of murder and two of attempted murder, Nilsen was sentenced to life imprisonment on 4 November 1983, with a recommendation that he serve a minimum of 25 years. In his later years, he was incarcerated at Full Sutton maximum security prison.

All of Nilsen's murders were committed in the two North London addresses in which he resided between 1978 and 1983. His victims would be lured to these addresses through guile and killed by strangulation, sometimes accompanied by drowning. Following each murder, Nilsen would observe a ritual in which he bathed and dressed the victim's body, which he retained for extended periods of time, before dissecting and disposing of the remains by burning on a bonfire or flushing down a lavatory.

Nilsen became known as the Muswell Hill Murderer, as he committed his later murders in the Muswell Hill district of North London. He died in prison on 12 May 2018.

Life before start killing
Nilsen was born in Strichen, Aberdeen shire to a Scottish mother and a Norwegian father. His father was an alcoholic and his parents divorced when he was four years old. His mother remarried and sent her son to his grandparents, but after a couple of years, he was sent back to his mother again.

Nilsen claimed the first traumatic event to shape his life came about when he was a small child, when his beloved grandfather died. His strict Catholic mother insisted that he view the body before burial. Whether this incident, or his mother and stepfather's lectures on the "impurities of the flesh" helped shape him into what he was to become, no one really knows.

In 1961, Nilsen enlisted in the British Army and became a cook in Aden, Cyprus and Berlin. He left the army in 1972 and served briefly as a police officer. From the mid 1970s, Nilsen worked as a civil servant in a jobcentre.

He was involved in a series of superficial, transitory relationships with men, though they did not assuage his feelings of profound isolation and loneliness. Like Jeffrey Dahmer, he sought somebody "who wouldn't leave"; that is, a corpse.

Reference: Dennis Andrew NILSEN
WIKI: Dennis Nilsen
Movie Name:
Cold Light of Day
IMDb Score[10]: 5.6
Rate Level: N/A
Released Year: 1989
Movie Type: Biography, Crime, Horror
Summary: Fictionalized account based on the actions of serial killer Dennis Nilsen. [resources: IMDb]

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Span of Crime: 1982-1998/2001
Victim Number: 49

Gary Leon Ridgway (born February 18, 1949), also known as the Green River Killer, is an American serial killer. He was initially convicted of 48 separate murders. As part of his plea bargain, another conviction was added, bringing the total number of convictions to 49, making him the second most prolific serial killer in United States history according to confirmed murders. He killed many teenage girls and women in the state of Washington during the 1980s and 1990s.

Most of Ridgway's victims were alleged to be sex workers and other women in vulnerable circumstances, including underage runaways. The press gave him his nickname after the first five victims were found in the Green River before his identity was known. He strangled his victims, usually by hand but sometimes using ligatures. After strangling them, he would dump their bodies in forested and overgrown areas in King County, often returning to the bodies to have sexual intercourse with them.

On November 30, 2001, as Ridgway was leaving the Kenworth truck factory where he worked in Renton, Washington, he was arrested for the murders of four women whose cases were linked to him through DNA evidence. As part of a plea bargain wherein he agreed to disclose the locations of still-missing women, he was spared the death penalty and received a sentence of life imprisonment without parole.

Life before start killing
Ridgway grew up in what became SeaTac, Washington. After graduating from high school in 1969—at the age of 20—he served a two-year stint in the U.S. Navy and later settled in the Seattle area, where he worked as a truck painter. Over the next 30 years, he married three times and had a son.

In 1980 Ridgway was arrested for allegedly choking a prostitute, but no charges were filed after he claimed that the woman had bit him. Two years later he was arrested for solicitation. Ridgway was believed to have begun his killing spree shortly thereafter. His first victim was thought to have been a 16-year-old girl who went missing after leaving her foster home in July 1982. Her body was found a week later, in the Green River. Over the next two years, Ridgway raped and killed more than 40 women, many of whom were prostitutes or runaways. A number of Ridgway’s early victims were later found in or near the river, giving rise to the nickname Green River Killer; other bodies were discovered in remote wooded areas. After 1984 he committed several more murders, the last occurring in 1998.

By August 1982 police believed that a serial killer was at work, and they eventually formed a special task force. Ridgway soon became a suspect. In 1983 he was questioned in the disappearance of a prostitute who a witness claimed had gotten into his truck. Ridgway denied the allegations and passed a polygraph in 1984. Detectives later discovered a 1982 report about police finding Ridgway with a prostitute in a parked car; two years later a body was found nearby. In 1987 law-enforcement officials obtained a search warrant for Ridgway’s home and work. However, none of the items—including carpet fibres and ropes—could be linked to the victims. They also obtained a DNA sample from Ridgway, but the technology then available was unable to match it with semen recovered from the bodies. However, following the advent of more sophisticated tests, a match was made in 2001, and Ridgway was arrested later that year.

Reference: Gary Ridgway: AMERICAN SERIAL KILLER
WIKI: Gary Ridgway
Movie Name:
Murder, No Apparent Motive
IMDb Score[10]: 7.3
Rate Level: N/A
Released Year: 1984
Movie Type: Documentary, Crime
Summary: Documentary about serial killers and FBI Behavioral Sciences Profilers. Interviews with Ed Kemper and Ted Bundy as well as crime victims and law enforcement officials. Includes some Dramatic Recreations. [resources: IMDb]

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Movie Name:
The Riverman
IMDb Score[10]: 6
Rate Level: R
Released Year: 2004
Movie Type: Biography, Crime, Drama
Summary: A series of interviews are conducted with convicted serial killer Ted Bundy in hopes of gaining insight into the Green River Killer who is terrorizing Seattle. [resources: IMDb]

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Movie Name:
Green River Killer
IMDb Score[10]: 1.9
Rate Level: R
Released Year: 2006
Movie Type: Crime, Horror
Summary: Along twenty years, the deranged serial-killer Gary Ridgway has killed at least forty-eight prostitutes and dumped their bodies in Green River. [resources: IMDb]

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Movie Name:
The Capture of the Green River Killer
IMDb Score[10]: 7.2
Rate Level: Not rated
Released Year: 2008
Movie Type: Biography, Crime, Drama
Summary: A pair of girls seeking adventure beyond the their Western Washington trailer park encounter the area's most ruthless serial killer. Based on Sheriff David Reichert's book, "Chasing the Devil: My Twenty-Year Quest to Capture the Green River Killer". [resources: IMDb]

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Movie Name:
Bundy and the Green River Killer
IMDb Score[10]: 3.7
Rate Level: Not Rated
Released Year: 2019
Movie Type: Crime, Drama, Thriller
Summary: A police detective consults with incarcerated madman Ted Bundy to help him catch The Green River Killer. [resources: IMDb]

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Span of Crime: 1984-1985
Victim Number: 14

Ricardo Leyva Muñoz Ramírez, known as Richard Ramirez, was an American serial killer, rapist, and burglar. His highly publicized home invasion crime spree terrorized the residents of the greater Los Angeles area and later the residents of the San Francisco. The killings began on June 28, 1984, when Mr. Ramirez slit the throat of a 79-year-old woman, Jennie Vincow, during a burglary. They ended when an angry mob, recognizing him from his mug shot released to the news media, beat him and held him until the police arrived to make an arrest on Aug. 31, 1985.

Most of the killings were committed before dawn during residential burglaries in Los Angeles County, and all were markedly coldblooded, involving savage beatings, mutilations and sexual assaults.

He used a wide variety of weapons, including handguns, knives, a machete, a tire iron, and a hammer. Ramirez, who claimed to be a Satanist, never expressed any remorse for his crimes. The judge who upheld Ramirez's nineteen death sentences remarked that his deeds exhibited "cruelty, callousness, and viciousness beyond any human understanding". Ramirez died of complications from B-cell lymphoma while awaiting execution on California's death row.

Life before start killing
When he was 12, Richard’s cousin Miguel Ramirez returned from the Vietnam War, and they began spending time together. They smoked marijuana, and his cousin showed Richard photos of Vietnamese women he said he had raped, tortured and killed. When he was 13, Richard was present when his cousin shot his wife in the face, killing her. (Miguel Ramirez, in part because of his war record, was sentenced to seven years in prison.) By then Richard had begun burglarizing homes. He dropped out of high school after less than a year.

Reference: Richard Ramirez, the ‘Night Stalker’ Killer, Dies at 53
WIKI: Richard Ramirez
Movie Name:
Manhunt: Search for the Night Stalker
IMDb Score[10]: 6.7
Rate Level: PG-13
Released Year: 1989
Movie Type: Crime, Drama, History
Summary: Based on the true story of Richard "The Night Stalker" Ramirez who terrorized California in 1985 and the two Los Angeles police detectives who try to track him down. [resources: IMDb]

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Movie Name:
Nightstalker
IMDb Score[10]: 3.3
Rate Level: R
Released Year: 2002
Movie Type: Crime, Horror
Summary: Richard Ramirez, aka the Nightstalker, who terrorized people in Los Angeles during the 1980s, and the police had no clue with him. [resources: IMDb]

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Movie Name:
The Night Stalker
IMDb Score[10]: 5.9
Rate Level: TV-14
Released Year: 2016
Movie Type: Crime, Drama, Mystery
Summary: An account of serial killer Richard Ramírez and his rampage in California during the mid-1980s. [resources: IMDb]

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Span of Crime: [Karla Leanne Homolka] 1990 - 1992
[Paul Kenneth Bernardo] 1986 - 1992
Victim Number: 3-4 killed, more than 13 rapes

Perpetrators1: Karla Leanne Homolka
Karla Leanne Homolka (born May 4, 1970), also known as Leanne Teale, is a Canadian serial killer who, with her first husband Paul Bernardo, raped and killed at least three minors between 1990 and 1992. Homolka attracted worldwide media attention when she was convicted of manslaughter following a plea bargain in the rape-murders of two Ontario teenage girls, Leslie Mahaffy and Kristen French, as well as the rape and death of her sister Tammy. Homolka and Bernardo were arrested in 1993. Bernardo would be convicted of the Mahaffy-French murders and received life imprisonment and a dangerous offender designation, the full maximum sentence allowed in Canada.

Perpetrators2: Paul Kenneth Bernardo
Paul Kenneth Bernardo (born August 27, 1964), also known as Paul Jason Teale, is a Canadian serial killer and serial rapist. Bernardo is known for initially committing a series of rapes in Scarborough, Ontario, a suburb of Toronto, between 1987 and 1990. He subsequently committed three murders with his then-wife Karla Homolka; among these victims was his young sister-in-law Tammy Homolka. After his capture and conviction, Bernardo was sentenced to life imprisonment and was later declared a dangerous offender unlikely to be released.

During the summer of 1990, according to Homolka, Bernardo became attracted to her younger sister, Tammy Homolka. Homolka hatched a plan to frame Bernardo for drugging Tammy, seeing an opportunity to "minimise risk, take control, and keep it all in the family." In July, "according to Bernardo's testimony, he and Karla served Tammy a spaghetti dinner spiked with Valium stolen from Karla's workplace. Bernardo raped Tammy for about a minute before she started to wake up."

Homolka later stole the anesthetic agent halothane from the Martindale Veterinarian Clinic where she worked. On December 23, 1990, after a Homolka family Christmas party, Bernardo and Karla Homolka drugged Tammy Homolka with the animal tranquilizers. Bernardo and Karla Homolka raped Tammy while she was unconscious. Tammy later choked on her own vomit and died. Before calling 911, they hid the evidence, redressed Tammy, who had a chemical burn on her face, and moved her into her basement bedroom. A few hours later, Tammy was pronounced dead at St. Catharines General Hospital without having regained consciousness. Bernardo told police he tried to revive her, but failed, and her death was ruled an accident.

Life before start killing
Karla Leanne Homolka
Karla Leanne Homolka was the eldest of Karel and Dorothy Homolka's three daughters. Her sisters were Lori (b. 1971) and Tammy (1975–1990). The family lived in St. Catharines, Ontario. Karla Homolka began working part-time at a pet shop while attending Sir Winston Churchill Secondary School. After graduation in 1988 she was hired by Thorold Veterinary Clinic to work as a veterinary assistant. She later took a similar job at the Martindale Animal Clinic, from which she stole drugs that were to be used in her crimes.

Karla Homolka met Paul Bernardo at a Scarborough restaurant on October 17, 1987, while they were both attending a convention in Toronto. She was 17 years old; he was 23. Bernardo proposed to Homolka on 24 December. The age of majority in Ontario is 18, and at the time, the age of consent in Canada was 14.

Paul Kenneth Bernardo
Bernardo was born into a wealthy but dysfunctional family. His mother Marilyn, who had been adopted by well-to-do Toronto lawyer Gerald Eastman and his wife Elizabeth, was raised in a stable household. His father, Kenneth, was the son of an English woman and an Italian immigrant who created a highly successful marble and tile business, but was abusive to his wife and children. Instead of entering the family business, Kenneth Bernardo became an accountant. After her father had disapproved of an earlier boyfriend, Eastman married Bernardo in 1960.

Like his father, Kenneth Bernardo was said to be abusive. Marilyn, after having given birth to a son and a daughter, began seeing a former boyfriend. She became pregnant and gave birth to Paul Kenneth Bernardo on August 27, 1964. Kenneth Bernardo tolerated his wife's affair and is listed as the biological father on Paul's birth certificate.

In 1975, Kenneth Bernardo fondled a girl and was charged with child molestation; he also sexually abused his own daughter. Bernardo's mother became depressed over her husband's abuse, withdrew from family life and lived in the basement of their Scarborough home. Though the elder children felt the effects of the emotional and mental turmoil, young Paul appeared to be unscathed by it. In his book Lethal Marriage, Nick Pron describes the young Bernardo: "He was always happy. A young boy who smiled a lot. And he was so cute, with his dimpled good looks and sweet smile, that many of the mothers just wanted to pinch him on the cheek whenever they saw him. He was the perfect child they all wanted: polite, well mannered, doing well in school, so sweet in his Boy Scout uniform."

Following an argument between his parents when Bernardo was 16, his mother told him of his actual parentage. Repulsed, he began openly to call his mother "slob" and "whore".

In October 1987, he met Karla Homolka. They became sexually interested in each other almost immediately. Unlike the other girls he knew, she encouraged his sadistic sexual behaviour, also encouraging his acts as the "Scarborough Rapist."

Reference: Paul Kenneth BERNARDO
Karla Leanne HOMOLKA
WIKI: Karla Homolka
WIKI: Paul Bernardo
Movie Name:
Karla
IMDb Score[10]: 5.5
Rate Level: R
Released Year: 2006
Movie Type: Crime, Drama, Thriller
Summary: Based on real events, Paul Bernardo and his wife, Karla Homolka, kidnap, sexually abuse, and murder three young girls. [resources: IMDb]

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Span of Crime: 1989-1990
Victim Number: 7

Aileen Carol "Lee" Wuornos Pralle was an American serial killer and prostitute[6] who murdered seven men in Florida in 1989 and 1990 by shooting them at point-blank range. Wuornos claimed that her victims had either raped or attempted to rape her while she was servicing them, and that all of the homicides were committed in self-defense. She was sentenced to death for six of the murders and was executed by lethal injection on October 9, 2002.

“I felt fulfilled, a sense of completeness and confirmation that what I was doing was correct,” she says. “And I knew that others didn’t know her like I do.”

“I had to kill them,” she said in a four-hour videotaped confession to police that was made public last week. “It’s like I’m thinking, ‘You bastards. You were gonna hurt me.’ It was self-defense. It was, like, ‘Hey, man, I gotta shoot you, ‘cause I think you’re gonna kill me.’ ”

In an interview with the Orlando Sentinel, Wournos tried to explain. “I’m not a man-hater,” she said. "(I am) so used to being treated like dirt that I guess it’s become a way of life. I’m a decent person.”

If this sounds like the stuff of Hollywood, it is. Wuornos and her story have set off a frenzy among filmmakers, writers, television tabloid shows and assorted hucksters, all trying to cash in on what is perhaps an unprecedented saga of a highway femme fatale. In fact, the scramble for the rights to the Lee Wuornos story has become a story in itself.

Life before start killing
Abandoned by her teenage mother, Aileen was left in the care of her grandparents when she was just a toddler. Her father, whom she never met, hanged himself in a Kansas prison. He had been serving a life sentence for raping a 7-year-old girl. Aileen claimed to have been sexually abused by her grandfather and raped when she was 13. She had her first child when she was 14, a baby boy, which she put up for adoption. Her grandmother died soon after the baby's birth. Aileen subsequently dropped out of school, left home, and became a prostitute. In the years that followed, Aileen's grandfather committed suicide and her brother Keith died of cancer. By no means should her childhood be a justification for her actions, but it definitely could have left her with severe emotional scars. Murdering, which she claimed with her first victim was an act of self-defense, was also a way for her to make money to support herself and her girlfriend/friend Tyria Moore, who was 24 when they met at a gay bar in Daytona

By 1990 Tyria Moore had become suspicious – if not fully aware – of Wuornos’ activities. Moore moved in with her family in Pennsylvania. When Wuornos was arrested on an outstanding warrant at a biker bar in Harbor Oaks, Florida, police tracked Moore down and used her to elicit a confession from Wuornos.

Reference: Monster (2003)
The Case of Aileen Wuornos - The Facts
WIKI: Aileen Wuornos
A Mother’s Love : Aileen Carol Wuornos ... in the local newspaper.
Movie Name:
Aileen Wuornos: The Selling of a Serial Killer
IMDb Score[10]: 7
Rate Level: R
Released Year: 1992
Movie Type: Documentary, Crime
Summary: 1992, Florida, USA. Aileen Wuornos is claimed to be the world's first female serial killer. [resources: IMDb]

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Movie Name:
Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer
IMDb Score[10]: 7.1
Rate Level: R
Released Year: 2003
Movie Type: Documentary, Crime
Summary: Nick Broomfield's second documentary about serial killer Aileen Wuornos, focusing on her mental state on death row. [resources: IMDb]

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Movie Name:
Monster
IMDb Score[10]: 7.3
Rate Level: R
Released Year: 2003
Movie Type: Biography, Crime, Drama
Summary: Based on the life of Aileen Wuornos, a Daytona Beach prostitute who became a serial killer. [resources: IMDb]

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Span of Crime: 1989-1993
Victim Number: 7

Ivan Robert Marko Milat(27 December 1944 – 27 October 2019) was an Australian serial killer who was convicted of the backpacker murders in 1996. From the age of 17, Ivan Milat was in trouble with the police, but it didn't come close to the seven murders he would be convicted for committing in 1996. Milat became known as the Backpacker Murderer after being found guilty of seven gruesome murders in Australia's Belanglo State Forest.

The Backpacker murders is the name given to a spate of serial killings that occurred in New South Wales, Australia during the 1990s. The bodies of seven missing young people aged 19 to 22 were discovered partly buried in the Belanglo State Forest, 15 kilometres (9.3 mi) south west of the New South Wales town of Berrima. Five of the victims were international backpackers visiting Australia (three German, two British), and two were Australian travellers from Melbourne.

There has been much speculation about the true number of Milat's victims, given that he has always maintained his innocence, but the luckiest of them was certainly British backpacker Paul Onions, who was hitchhiking south from Sydney, in search of work, and was picked up by Milat on January 25, 1990.

Milat was initially very friendly, introducing himself as "Bill," but Onions found Milat's personal questions about his plans unnerving, and he became concerned for his safety when Milat began ranting, and making racist and xenophobic remarks. When Milat pulled his car to the side of the road, Onions tried to get out, but Milat pulled out a revolver and told him to put on his seatbelt. Onions managed to bolt for safety, leaving his backpack, which contained all his possessions and passport. Despite Milat's threat that he would shoot him, he managed to flag down a passing car, which took him to the nearest police station so that he could report the incident. He returned to Sydney to replace the missing passport, and eventually returned to the United Kingdom, not yet aware of his narrow escape.

Life before start killing
Milat was born in Guildford, Australia, on December 27, 1944, one of 14 children in an extended Yugoslavian immigrant family. Family life was rural and insular, and the Milats kept to themselves, making reliable information about Milat's upbringing difficult to obtain. Interviews with his brother, Boris, after Milat's trial, indicate that he exhibited psychopathic tendencies early on, though other family members dispute this. Milat was described as a good-looking, muscular boy, who had a fascination for hunting and guns, and took great care of his appearance. His parents were hard-working and strict. With 14 children to manage, discipline was difficult, and Milat and his brothers had a reputation for lawlessness in their neighborhood. The family endured numerous police visits to their farm as the children grew older.

Reference: Ivan Robert Marko Milat
WIKI: Ivan Milat
Ivan Milat Biography
Movie Name:
Wolf Creek
IMDb Score[10]: 6.2
Rate Level: R
Released Year: 2003
Movie Type: Horror, Thriller
Summary: Three backpackers stranded in the Australian outback are plunged in a hellish nightmare of insufferable torture by a sadistic psychopathic local. [resources: IMDb]

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Movie Name:
Wolf Creek 2
IMDb Score[10]: 6.1
Rate Level: Not rated
Released Year: 2013
Movie Type: Horror, Thriller
Summary:The outback once more becomes a place of horror as another unwitting tourist becomes the prey for crazed, serial-killing pig-hunter Mick Taylor. [resources: IMDb]

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Span of Crime: 1992-1999
Victim Number: 11

Perpetrators1: Mark Ray Haydon
Mark Ray Haydon (born 4 December 1958), an associate of Bunting, was initially the subject of "suppression orders or statutory provisions prohibiting publication" and could not therefore be identified as anything other than an alleged perpetrator. In January 1999, he reportedly rented the abandoned state bank building at Snowtown. A jury deadlocked on the murders of Haydon's wife, Elizabeth Haydon, and of Troy Youde. The murder charges were not retried when Haydon pled guilty to helping the serial killers dispose of the bodies of Elizabeth and Youde.

Perpetrators2: John Justin Bunting
John Justin Bunting(born 4 September 1966 in Inala, Queensland) was found to be the leader of the perpetrators. When he was 8 years old, Bunting was beaten and sexually assaulted by a friend's older brother. He is reported to have "enjoyed weaponry, photography and anatomy," and grew to develop a strong hatred of paedophiles and homosexuals. At age 22, Bunting worked at an abattoir and reportedly "bragged about slaughtering the animals, saying that's what he enjoyed the most".:1 Bunting moved to a house in Salisbury North, South Australia in 1991 and befriended his neighbours Mark Haydon and Robert Wagner. Wagner's romantic partner, Vanessa Lane, a.k.a. Barry Lane, was a male cross-dresser with a history of paedophilia.

Perpetrators3: Robert Joe Wagner
Robert Joe Wagner (born 28 November 1971 in Parramatta, New South Wales) was befriended by Bunting in 1991. Bunting encouraged Wagner to assist in the various murders.

Perpetrators4: James "Jamie" Spyridon Vlassakis
James "Jamie" Spyridon Vlassakis (born 24 December 1979), along with his mother and half-brother, lived with Bunting and was gradually drawn into helping with the murders. Vlassakis, 23, helped torture and kill his own half-brother, Troy Youde, and his stepbrother, David Johnson. He confessed in 2001 to four murders, including Johnson's, and became a key witness for the Crown. The detail he provided, supported by other evidence, helped convict Bunting and Wagner. Vlassakis was sentenced in 2002 to a minimum of 26 years and is held in isolation in an unidentified South Australia prison.

The "Snowtown" murders (also known as the bodies in barrels murders) were a series of murders committed by John Bunting, Robert Wagner and James Vlassakis between August 1992 and May 1999, in and around Adelaide, South Australia. A fourth person, Mark Haydon, was convicted for helping to dispose of the bodies. The trial was one of the longest and most publicised in Australian legal history.

Most of the bodies were found in barrels in an abandoned bank vault in Snowtown, hence the names given in the press for the murders. Only one of the victims was killed in Snowtown itself, which is approximately 140 kilometres (87 miles) north of Adelaide, and neither the eleven victims nor the three perpetrators were from the town. Although motivation for the murders is unclear, the killers were led by Bunting to believe that the victims were paedophiles, homosexuals, or "weak". In the case of some victims, the murders were preceded by torture, and efforts were made to appropriate victims' identities, social security payments and bank accounts.

Although initially the notoriety of the murders led to a short-term economic boost from tourists visiting Snowtown, it created a lasting stigma, with authorities considering a change of the town's name and identity.

There haven't been many Australian serial killers who have murdered as prolifically as Bunting and his gang, nor as heinously. Their victims were their own family members and friends, who they often torturing them before death. Most of the killers have never shown remorse and the little town has forever been scarred. As you learn more about these murders in Snowtown, keep in mind that these killers are all behind bars and still alive. There may be more victims that authorities do not know about yet.

The victims of the group of murderers rarely died quickly. Police recovered the following tools that were used to torture the victims: knives, saws, a double barrel shotgun, rope, tape, gloves, pliers, clamps, cloth, and even a Variac metallurgy tool that was used to give electric shocks to the genitals and other parts of the victims. One of the killers later confessed about how the tools were used, and it did not paint a pretty picture.

Ray Davies was garroted with rope and a lever after he was put into a bath. Before he died, they attacked him with clubs and beat his genitals. They even crushed one of his toes with a pair of pliers, just to make him suffer. Another victim, Frederick Brooks, was given electric shocks to his testicles and had a lit sparkler shoved into his penis. His toes were also crushed with pliers and his nose and ears were burned with cigarettes. Eventually, they stuffed a rag in his mouth and just let him choke to death. All the while, these two men and other victims were forced to call their killers different titles, such as "God," "Master," "Lord Sir," and "Chief Inspector."

There Were At Least Four People Involved With The Killings
Historically, prolific serial killers tend to work alone because it affords them a smaller chance of getting caught. This was not at all the case for the Snowtown murders. There was a ringleader who pushed for and arranged all the killings, and he enlisted not one, but three other people to regularly help with the crimes, as well as a few others. John Bunting, the one in charge, approached his neighbor, Robert Wagner, as a friend and eventually roped him into murder.

Bunting was married to Elizabeth Harvey, and through her, met her son, James Vlassakis. Vlassakis would help with and suggest later killings. Mark Haydon also lived nearby and became friends with Bunting, and was eventually drawn into his circle of murders.

In addition to these four main players, there were other accomplices. Bunting's wife, Elizabeth Harvey, also assisted in at least one of the murders. Thomas Trevilyan was initially part of the gang as well, but later became a victim. Jodie Elliott was a relative of Mark Haydon and also helped out with collecting money after the killings. With all of these people involved in the murders, it's shocking the operation went on for as many years as it did.

Reference: The Horrific Details Behind The Snowtown Murders
WIKI: Snowtown murders
Movie Name:
The Snowtown Murders
IMDb Score[10]: 6.6
Rate Level: Not rated
Released Year: 2011
Movie Type: Biography, Crime, Drama
Summary: Based on true events, 16 year-old Jamie falls in with his mother's new boyfriend and his crowd of self-appointed neighborhood watchmen, a relationship that leads to a spree of torture and murder. [resources: IMDb]

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