There's a scene in David Fincher's Zodiac where the incredibly overworked and almost burnt out San Francisco homicide detective working around the clock to track down and arrest the Zodiac is persuaded to take a night off and just go to the movies with his wife to see the new Dirty Harry flick;
The modern social construct of the serial killer was invented in California during Ronald Reagan's two gubernatorial terms in office, where they were systematically emptying out all the psychiatric wards and low-medium security state prisons, having given many of the inmates an initial trauma-bonded program of mental conditioning patterned on the Dianetics-based auditing that they had been developing with the Phoenix Program Death Squads in Vietnam.
Serial killers basically do not exist in nature under ordinary social conditions, as testified to by basic reality that it's actually in fact extremely difficult for any one person to possess the means to kill a series of two or more people in a messy, gory and up close way, with blood and spit and other kinds of extremely incriminating forensic markers that would connect the killer to his victims very directly, without police assistance. The longer and more numerous the series of killings, the more absurd it becomes that the police keep coming up empty for any leads.
The archetypal template for the modern serial killer psychopath, the primary source for close to, if not exactly all of the recognised Memes of the Serial Killer Myth comes to us from the Whitechapel Murders of 1888 - for almost 80 years, lacking any formal legal or clinical term to refer to a murderous stranger that kills brutally, mercilessly to strike out with what seemed to be inhuman rage and cruelty, practically it would seem almost at random, such killers attracted to their criminal reputations the name of Ripper.
The following things tend to occur in a serial killer plot:
', i.e. someone who goes on a murderous rampage in a smaller area over a shorter time. In fact, this is more common than actual serial killers, though characters often confuse the two, as time contraints mean the killings in a story usually take place over the space of a few days, whereas real serial killers by definition usually have weeks, months, or years between their kills.The term "serial killer" isn't actually that old; it was coined in German (as "Serienmörder", serial murderer) in 1930 by Ernst Gennat, the highly influential director of the Berlin criminal police in the 1930s. "Serial murderer" crops up in 1966 and "serial killer" is generally attributed to FBI agent Robert Ressler in the 1970s, it didn't enter popular culture until 1981.A counterpart to the Serial Rapist; it's not uncommon for the tropes to overlap. Compare with Psycho for Hire, where a job that requires killing people is used by villains to act out their sadism. See also Hunting the Most Dangerous Game, where someone makes an actual sport out of killing people. The killer feared by other killers is a Serial-Killer Killer.Note that the Real Life section below is only a very small sampling of well-known serial murderers. Also, many potential Serial Killers get caught quickly because they use an MO, and also because a lot of them are so sick and broken that they want to get caught — yes, they see it as some kind of game.
- The killer sends a note to the police, or a newspaper, or both, with a taunting message that ends in a challenge along the lines of "You can't catch me." A gruesome souvenir may also be included.
- A variation is to have the killer send a message saying "Please catch me before I kill more."
- Serial killers are often, but not always, portrayed as The Chessmaster, brilliantly layering one Evil Plan onto another. Often, this takes the form of a series of Batman Gambits that lead the police on a series of wild goose chases as the killer gloats.
- They have a wall full of newspaper clippings covering their actions. Sometimes they keep a photographic record of their kills, or even a souvenir of the victim's.
- Scenes of the killer watching news reports about their own crimes, and gloating about being in the media spotlight, are also common.
- If it's part of a Story Arc, one cop is probably going to fall victim (which is part of the requisite Tonight Someone Dies hype).
- At the climax, one of the cops is usually Alone with the Psycho, but is saved Just in Time.
- If the killer is not depicted as Ax-Crazy, then the victims all have something to do with one another.
- If somebody else is wrongfully implicated, and looks close to taking the rap, the serial killer will bump them off, even though this means casting suspicion back on himself.
- Or the killer will kill again while the wrongfully accused is incarcerated, casting suspicion back on himself.
- Sometimes he will do it because it casts suspicion back towards himself, because he is insulted that the police suspect someone he considers unworthy of the attention.
- The killer might leave a distinctive Calling Card at each scene of his crimes.
- The killer might be a Poetic Serial Killer, who kills bad people with ironic methods.
- Or they're a Theme Serial Killer, and they have a set of themes (possibly taken from a poem/book), with each victim fitting the next theme in the killer's list (which they rarely get to complete).
- The killer will fondly recall or talk about their victims.
- Some of these plots have the Serial Killer insert themselves into the investigation, either by posing as a witness, victim, or in some cases, an investigator. The killer's purpose in doing this is either to misdirect the police or prove how much smarter the killer is than the cops. While it's much more common in fiction, this has actually happened in real life.
', i.e. someone who goes on a murderous rampage in a smaller area over a shorter time. In fact, this is more common than actual serial killers, though characters often confuse the two, as time contraints mean the killings in a story usually take place over the space of a few days, whereas real serial killers by definition usually have weeks, months, or years between their kills.The term "serial killer" isn't actually that old; it was coined in German (as "Serienmörder", serial murderer) in 1930 by Ernst Gennat, the highly influential director of the Berlin criminal police in the 1930s. "Serial murderer" crops up in 1966 and "serial killer" is generally attributed to FBI agent Robert Ressler in the 1970s, it didn't enter popular culture until 1981.A counterpart to the Serial Rapist; it's not uncommon for the tropes to overlap. Compare with Psycho for Hire, where a job that requires killing people is used by villains to act out their sadism. See also Hunting the Most Dangerous Game, where someone makes an actual sport out of killing people. The killer feared by other killers is a Serial-Killer Killer.Note that the Real Life section below is only a very small sampling of well-known serial murderers. Also, many potential Serial Killers get caught quickly because they use an MO, and also because a lot of them are so sick and broken that they want to get caught — yes, they see it as some kind of game.Hollywood Accredits the Memes.
- Many a fictional serial killer is Very Loosely Based on a True Story. Ed Gein and Albert Fishin particular have a lot of Captain Ersatz counterparts based on them.
- Buffalo Bill and Hannibal Lecter from Silence of Lambs are, respectively, loosely based on Gein and Fish.
- Mama's boy Norman Bates is also based on Gein.
- And elements of the The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) were inspired by Gein's gruesome style of interior decorating.
- Buffalo Bill was also partly based on Bundy, namely, the bit where Bill pretends to be disabled and asks his victim for help to move/carry something.
- Buffalo Bill is also based on Gary Heidnik, who abducted women and imprisoned them in his basement. However, his motives were to make the women his harem, whereas Bill had no sexual interest in his captives.
- It is worth noting, however, that Gein himself is a subversion via the most technical details. As disturbing as his story is, he was only known to have committed two murders and was only technically convicted for one of them. Three murders is the baseline for law enforcement when classifying serial killers. There is some speculation that he also killed his brother, who died under mysterious circumstances, but it was never proven.
- Buffalo Bill and Hannibal Lecter from Silence of Lambs are, respectively, loosely based on Gein and Fish.
- Albert DeSalvo is a controversial case. He confessed to being the infamous Boston Strangler, but was never tried for the killings, but rather a series of rapes. To this day there is a lot of debate about whether he was the murderer or a fall guy.
- Similar to the Boston Strangler case, William Heirens was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of two women and a young girl in Chicago. He confessed, but whether his interview was either coerced or forced is up to question.
- Harvey Glatman confessed to raping and murdering three women in California, luring them by posing as a photographer.Glatman: The reason I killed those girls was 'cause they asked me to. They did, all of them.Officer: They asked you to?Glatman: Sure. They said they'd rather be dead than be with me.
- Jerry Brudos wasn't very prolific, but he stands out for one particular reason: at his trial, he argued that a photograph of him with one of his victims couldn't be used as evidence against him because the victim in the picture wasn't the person he had been accused of killing.
- To be fair, he's got an argument there. If he wasn't charged with killing the person in the photo, it's irrelevant to the specific case at hand and extremely prejudicial to the jury.
- Dean Corll was the first serial killer to get nation-wide publicity in the US. He raped, tortured and murdered at least 28 boys (probably more) in Houston, Texas in the 1970's. He owned a candy store and was often called the Candy Man, a name that in hindsight seems like a gigantic red flag. And he had two teenaged accomplices, David Brooks and Elmer Wayne Henley, who procured victims and helped kill them. Brooks did it because he seemed to be in love with Corll; Henley was probably Only in It for the Money.
- The most prolific serial killer in history, who didn't advertise it, was Harold Shipman. A British medical doctor, he was sent down for a full life term (no possibility of parole) in 2000 for 15 murders, using drug overdoses. Investigations concluded that he had, overall, killed at least 215 people, mostly old women, and probably 250, if not more (459 patients had died in his care overall, but it is unclear how many he actually killed since many of his patients were elderly). He committed suicide in 2004.
- A likely American counterpart to Shipman was Charles Cullen, who plead guilty in 2004 for killing around forty patients over the course of his 16-year nursing career. Authorities strongly suspect that he may have committed up to four hundred murders, which if true would completely overshadow Shipman's record. His emotionless interview on 60 Minutes is the stuff Nightmare Fuel is made of.
- Then there's Michael Swango, a medical student and one-time EMT believed to have killed at least four and possibly sixty of his patients between 1983 and 1997 by overdosing them on drugs or using poison. While employed in non-medial occupations, he would slip arsenic into his coworker's food to try and poison them too. When his notoriety became such that he couldn't get work in US hospitals, he fled to Africa where he continued killing until his final apprehension.
- Arfinn Nesset. A Norwegian serial killer that is nearly the same as the three above. However this guy is still alive and free. Scary right?
- A likely American counterpart to Shipman was Charles Cullen
- One special episode of the A&E series The First 48 had the detectives being documented discover a genuine serial killer, one who actually did call the police to gloat when the first bodies were discovered. Even more unbelievably (in the sense of "it only happens in movies") they actually did use sound analysis of the call for background noise and tracking the cellphone to pinpoint his location.
- Jack the Ripper, murdered and brutally mutilated five prostitutes in London's Whitechapel district in 1888. One of the first to have his crimes extensively documented by the media as they happened and certainly the most famous uncaught serial killer in history.
- Similarly, Peter Sutcliffe murdered 13 women he believed to be prostitutes over a five-year span, earning him the alias "The Yorkshire Ripper" in the press.
- "Jack the Stripper", who killed several prostitutes by choking them to death. Like Saucy Jack, he was never caught.
- Similarly, Peter Sutcliffe
- One of America's first serial killers was Herman Mudgett, better known as H.H. Holmes, who was most active during the time of Chicago's Colombian Exposition. He killed mostly women, and while it's confirmed he killed at least 27, some people believe the true body count to be over a hundred. He committed his crimes in a labyrinthine hotel/boarding house that was full of secret passages, a Torture Cellar and at least one Gas Chamber (masquerading as just another room). It was designed from the start to be a murder house for his own depraved amusement.
- John Douglas is one of the first Real Life profilers, actually writing the book on the patterns of serial killers (several, in fact). It wasn't without cost, though; the cumulative stress of the work nearly killed him. His autobiography, Mindhunter, is highly recommended to anyone interested in the subject.
- Jeffrey Dahmer,the Milwaukee Cannibal, who raped, murdered and dismembered seventeen young men and boys in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and whose later murders involved necrophilia, cannibalism and the permanent preservation of body parts — typically part of or all of the victim's skeletal structure. He was sentenced to life in prison, and eventually was beaten to death by another inmate.
- Carl Panzram.
- Quote: "In my lifetime I have murdered 21 human beings, I have committed thousands of burglaries, robberies, larcenies, arsons and last but not least I have committed sodomy [read: rape] on more than 1,000 male human beings. For all these things I am not in the least bit sorry."
- Originally Panzram was only sentenced to twenty-five years. Why was he executed? When they sent him to Leavenworth, he told the warden, "I'll kill the first man that bothers me." You hear this a lot, but Panzram kept that promise - he beat the laundry foreman to death with an iron bar, and then threatened to kill the human rights groups that tried to appeal the death sentence he got for it! Specifically, he sent them a letter containing the now-legendary line, "The only sentiment you'll get out of me is that I wish you all had one neck and I had my hands around it." He reportedly also criticized his own hangman for taking too long while prepping him for said execution.
- Aileen Wuornos, whose story inspired the movie Monster.
- Ted Bundy, who popularized the idea of the boy-next-door serial killer who blends in effortlessly with the general community.
- Robert Pickton, who inspired the Criminal Minds season 4 finale.
- Richard Trenton Chase, the Vampire of Sacramento. His Wikipedia article alone consists of pure Nightmare Fuel.
- Belle Gunness
- Timothy Spencer is notable for two reasons: he was a rare interracial serial killer, and he was the first murderer to be convicted on the basis of DNA evidence, which also exonerated an innocent man convicted of one of his crimes. He was executed in 1994 for the rape, torture and murder of five women.
- John Wayne Gacy, most notable for being a party clown when not slaughtering young men and hiding them in the crawlspace under his house. Notably, when he realized the cops were after him, he taunted them by publicly smoking weed and breaking traffic laws, knowing they didn't want him on lesser charges and even picked up the restaurant tabs of the detectives who had him under surveillance. Eventually he got so bold, he invited cops to his house for dinner, where they caught the smell of rotting flesh that was his ultimate undoing.
- One of the most prolific in history, Andrei Chikatilo, who killed over fifty women and children. The reason he got away with it for so long was because the Soviet Union, where he lived and killed, was in denial and believed serial killers to be a consequence of the "decadent west". He may actually be the partial basis for Roark Jr, aka That Yellow Bastard, in Sin City, particularly the part about "can't get it up without hearing his victims scream".
- Although it is debatable just how many victims were really his, and how many were simply unsolved murders that the Soviet authorities pinned on him once they had someone to blame for them. He certainly was a prolific killer, but just how prolific may never actually be known.
- Charles Manson himself may not have been a serial killer, but his followers, the Manson Family absolutely were. A serial killer is defined as someone who kills more than three people with a "cooling off" period in between the killings. Music teacher Gary Hinman was murdered by the Family on July 25, 1969. On August 9, 1969, they murdered five people, six if you count Sharon Tate's unborn baby; the next night, they killed grocers Leno and Rosemary LaBianca. On the 26th, they killed Donald "Shorty" Shea, a Hollywood stuntman. That's nine people (ten if you count Tate's child) in just a few weeks. In addition, other people are suspected of having been victims of the family, including Ronald Hughes, one member's defense attorney (believed to have been killed for balking at letting his client sacrifice herself to clear Manson). Although he was a chief conspirator in all of the killings, Manson did not personally draw a single drop of blood — except for cutting Hinman's ear off, according to testimony — but the various members of his "family" could certainly count as serial killers, especially Charles "Tex" Watson (Tate, LaBianca and Shea murders), Susan Atkins (Hinman and Tate), and Patricia Krenwinkel (Tate and LaBianca).
- Charles Manson himself is suspected of killing at least one person - a black man who he believed was a member of the Black Panthers (or claimed to believe); he started preaching his race-war creed "Helter Skelter" shortly afterwards. Whether he genuinely thought the Black Panthers were out to get him or if it was just another level of manipulation is unknown. He is also known to have taken part in at least one of the Family murders; he did not kill the victim, but he tied her up for his followers to do so.
- David "Son of Sam" Berkowitz. Claims to fame: Saying that his neighbor's dog told him to kill, sending rambling letters to the newspapers and shooting his victims with a .44 Special revolver. (He was dubbed "The .44 Caliber Killer" in the press before the bizarreness with the dog came out.)
- The Zodiac, who was never caught during his lifetime. Authorities seem to have narrowed their area of suspicion down to about a dozen different men. However almost all of whom are now dead so even if they do manage to figure it out, there's a good chance they'll never be able to bring the guy to justice.
- A copycat of the Zodiac. Heriberto Seda, and was caught because he sent some many messages to the police that when he shot his sister's boyfriend with a zip gun, the cops recognized his M.O. and his handwriting.
- Tommy Lynn Sells, recently claimed to have killed 70+ people, once said that he didn't like/use guns, because they were dangerous.
- Countess Elizabeth Báthory is one of history's most prolific serial killers, tortured and killed over 500 women, although she was only convicted for 80. Legend has it she did this so that she could bathe in the blood of young virgins and maintain her vitality, but it is believed Báthory did it for the fun of it, which is far more chilling.
- However, modern Hungarian historians have attempted to give her a Historical Hero Upgrade claiming that maybe she wasn't a serial killer at all, but a victim of a show trial by the Habsburgs to get her land and fortune. However the reports of the murders, which her husband joined in with, are far closer to contemporary and it seems fairly likely that she killed at least some. The notaries in the case took testimony from more than 300 witnesses, several of whom lost relatives. Two of the accused named around 36 victims (although they may well have been tortured so the reliability of that is up for debate).
- Pedro López, the "Monster of the Andes" raped and killed at least a hundred, but maybe three hundred, young girls across South America. The higher figure would make him one of the most prolific known serial killer in history. What could be scarier than that? He's been a free man since 1998 and is wanted for murder again.
- Gilles de Rais was a French nobleman, war hero, compatriot of Joan Of Arc and murdered at least 80 children between 1432 and 1440, the majority of whom were also raped or sexually abused. Much like Bathory, a few people have tried claiming that he was framed by the church to acquire his lands but that's extremely unlikely since firstly, the church didn't have a hope of acquiring his lands (which ended up going to the Duke of Brittany); secondly, his confederates gave very detailed testimony and thirdly, around forty bodies were discovered. Margaret Murray has also tried claiming that he was a Dianic pagan who was subject to religious persecution but the evidence for this is virtually nil.
- Australia had Eric Cooke, an unusual serial killer who changed his M.O. Two innocent men were also charged with crimes Cooke committed, but have since been exonerated. He earned a bit of notoriety for being the last man hanged in Australia.
- "BTK" (Bind, Torture, Kill): Dennis Rader, who murdered 10 people in the Sedgwick county area of Wichita, Kansas from 1977-1989 while sending taunting letters and poems to the police, and was caught approximately a decade and a half after his last victim, because after such a long time he got bored and started sending letters to the police again, announcing that he was plotting his next murder. Lots of televison shows have since had a take on him, though most commonly the reason for their killer's lengthy absence is that he was seriously injured in some way and had to temporarily stop.note
- Henry Lee Lucas is an interesting case. While he confessed to the murder of nearly 600 people (including people who turned out to still be alive), he often would recant his confessions, only to confess to other murders. He often became the "go-to" guy by police departments who wanted to clear their unsolved murder files. Since he was already sentenced to death, he relished in the attention that the confessions brought him. When he died in prison in 2001, forensics were only able to confirm 3 of his confessions, which technically did make him a serial killer. His supposed exploits inspired the brilliant Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer.
- Gary Ridgway, better known as the Green River Killer, is one of the most prolific serial killers of the 20th century. He was convicted for the murder of 48 women over the course of three decades. However it is believed that he killed up to 90 women.
- Ridgway is, in many ways, something of an outlier as far as serial killers go. His motivations didn't entirely fit into either the mission based or power/control categories, although not particularly intelligent and rather spontaneous in his killings (a stereotypical "disorganized" killer), he had an uncanny ability to hide bodies and eliminate evidence (he was caught due to a DNA swab from one of his first victims), and he was able to either stop or greatly curtail his killings for a considerable length of time. This has led many conspiracy theorists to believe that the Green River killings were the work of multiple killers, and that large parts of Ridgway's confessions were fabricated.
- Richard Ramirez is notorious for his completely random modus operandi as well as choice of victim. He terrorized the whole LA area in the 80's. He died of natural causes at age 53 in 2013, after spending over 23 years on death row.
- The Cleveland Torso Murderer is an especially gruesome example of an unsolved serial killing case. As the name suggests, the victims of this killer were dismembered and some of them were disembowled. Only a handful of the victims could be identified, making it an even more disturbing case. He/She also might be the culprit behind the infamous Black Dahlia murder.
- Peter Kürten, also known as the Vampire of Düsseldorf. Known for being one of the first investigations to use a criminal profile.
- The Servant Girl Annihilator, in turn of the century killer from Austin, Texas. Noted for stalking black and white women with an axe, his crimes predate Jack the Ripper by only a few years, leading the newspapers of the time to claim the two were the same man. Two men were tried for the crime, but no one was ever convicted. The killings were supposedly the indirect inspiration for the famous moon towers that dot the Austin cityscape.
- Edmund Kemper, 6'9" tall, over 300 pounds of weight and IQ of 145. Started with his grandparents (at 15) and worked his way from there. When asked by the judge what he thought a suitable punishment for his crimes would be, Kemper answered, "Death by torture." He got life imprisonment instead.
- Levi Bellfield only murdered three woman (and attempted to kill two others), but one of those murders (the murder of Milly Dowler) he got away with for years until he was suspected of it in 2008 and convicted in 2011 (he had been convicted of the other murders in 2008).
- Vaughn Greenwood, "the Skid Row Slasher". Notable in that his list of victims very nearly included famous stuntman and director Hal Needham.
- Donald Henry "Pee-Wee" Gaskins, "The Redneck Charles Manson". He claimed to have killed over a hundred people, though the confirmed number is much smaller. A number of his victims were hitchhikers he picked up near the South Carolina coast, then brutalized and murdered (eventually; he enjoyed making them suffer) in various ways For the Evulz. He even claimed to have cannibalized some of them.
- Yang Xinhai, called "Monster Killer", was the worst serial killer of China. He confessed to committing 65 murders between 1999 and 2003. He'd enter homes at night and kill everybody inside with axes, hammers and shovels. He was sentenced to death and executed in 2004.
- Rodney Alcala, perhaps most (in)famous because he was a contestant on The Dating Game back in 1978, right in the middle of his murderous rampage, and won. Luckily for the woman who chose him, she later found him too creepy and refused to go on a date with him.
- The Axeman of New Orleans rampaged through the city from May 1918 to October 1919, slaughtering Italian-Americans. He was never captured. Notoriously, he sent a letter to a newspaper claiming that he would strike on a given date... but would spare anyone listening to jazz. (Every music hall in New Orleans was filled to capacity that night, and no murders were reported.)
- Ian Brady and Myra Hindley, who buried their child victims on a moor near Manchester. One of the bodies has yet to be found.
- Thomas Quick/Sture Bergwall note , Sweden's most notorious serial killer, who may have not actually killed anyone. He has confessed to around 30 murders, supposedly committed in Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland between 1964 and 1993, and has been convicted of eight of them. He is mentally ill, and is serving his sentence in a mental institution. In later years, the convictions have been questioned, the reason being that he was convicted on very shaky grounds based mostly on his own confessions and not much else, and the fact that a lot of his confessions simply don't make any sense. In 2008 he officially recanted all of his confessions. Public opinion of is all over the place. Some think he killed all the people he originally confessed to killing, some think he may have killed some of them but probably not the more far-fetched ones, and some think he's simply a sick, attention seeking man who has been used in the most heinous of ways by police and other authorities trying to make themselves look good by catching a serial killer.
- It's somewhat surprising that Saldivar Efren isn't better known. While his methods aren't unusual (he was an Angel of Death killer, a doctor, and used muscle relaxants to murder), his motives are truly horrifying. He felt that the hospital staff where he worked were overburdened, and killed excess patients to reduce the workload. A few years ago a documentary on his killings interviewed a number of people involved in the case, who felt that to this day he sincerely believes he was BEING HELPFUL!
- Lonnie David Franklin Jr. AKA the Grim Sleeper, was a serial killer who operated in African American communities of California during the time of the gang wars between the Bloods and the Crips which spanned from the 80s to the early 90s. Because of this, many of his killings of African American women went completely unnoticed by the Los Angeles police department, whom believe the killings were done by different people. After one of his victims survived getting shot, a female reporter, Christine Pelisek, who interviewed the victim, realized a serial killer was preying on African American women for over a decade and decided to do a personal investigation. After uncovering evidence, she finally convinced a doubtful police department to take the theory seriously. This led to many Unfortunate Implications by the African-American citizens who already didn't trust the California police, believing they let the serial killer reign, because they didn't care about black victims. He was finally caught in 2010, thanks to DNA evidence found on a piece of pizza he didn't finish at a local pizza place he frequented. A Lifetime Movie of the Week, called the The Grim Sleeper, came out in March of 2014, detailing the case from the POV of the reporter. He has yet to face justice for the murders as of 2014, because his defense attorney keeps delaying the trial.
- A candidate for Jane Goodall's most disturbing discovery was a chimpanzee serial killer. The chimp in question, dubbed Passion, would systematically kill unrelated infants, recruiting her daughter, Pom, as an accomplice. Even human intervention would not stop her. Not only that, she would always make reconciliatory gestures toward her victims' mothers after she was done. The killings only stopped when Passion died. Pom, once free from her mother's influence, turned out to be perfectly normal, as were her own children. The killings themselves, combined with Passion's general emotional distance from the troupe and especially her own children, and her manipulation of the other adults were all eerily similar to a human psychopath.
- John Reginald Christie, subject of the book and film 10 Rillington Place. He killed at least seven women (including his wife) and a 13 month old child between 1943 and 1953, usually tenants of his flat in London. Most victims were gassed, sexually assaulted and finally strangled to death; Christie either buried their corpses in his garden, or concealed them behind his apartment wall. He's most notorious for framing Timothy Evans, husband and father of two of his victims; Evans was hanged, and after Christie's arrest, the resultant outcry over Evans' wrongful conviction played a role in Britain's repeal of capital punishment.
- Another non-human example who targets his own species is Hannibal the swan who inhabited a pond in Pembroke. He would target swans who wandered under the bridge, where his family lived, and would drown and beat them to death. He attacked 37 swans, and killed 15 of them.
