Random Dangerous Serial Killers Who Had Nicknames (41 items)

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  (#1) Lonnie David Franklin, Jr.

  Nickname: The Grim Sleeper

  Franklin was alleged to have slain a number of women in South Central Los Angeles, then disappeared for 13 years, earning him the nickname "The Grim Sleeper." He started committing these atrocities again, and police were able to track him down using DNA technology that didn't exist when his spree began.

  He was found guilty of 10 slayings in 2016, and he is a suspect in at least 20 more.
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  (#2) David Berkowitz

  • 70

  Nicknames: Son of Sam, the .44 Caliber Killer

  David Berkowitz carried out a series of shootings in the summer of 1976. Using a .44 caliber Bulldog revolver, he shot six people until they passed and wounded seven others. Berkowitz sent a series of taunting letters to police and the press promising further shootings, terrorizing the people of New York City.

  Berkowitz was captured in August 1977 and confessed to everything. He was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison for each life he took, to be served consecutively and is unlikely to ever be released.
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  (#3) Gary Ridgway

  • 74

  Nickname: The Green River Killer

  Ridgway was one of the United States' most prolific slayers. He was arrested in 2001 for ending the lives of four people, though he confessed to slaying at least 70 women in Washington State throughout the 1980s and 1990s.

  He avoided capital punishment by providing detailed confessions and leading police to the dumping sites of his victims, five of whom he dumped in the Green River leading to the press giving him his nickname. He was convicted of 49 slayings and sentenced to life imprisonment without parole.
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  (#4) Dennis Rader

  • 78

  Nickname: Bind, Torture, Kill (BTK)

  Dennis Raider slayed 10 people in Wichita, Kansas, between 1974 and 1991. Obsessed with notoriety, Raider sent taunting letters to police under his nickname. He stalked his victims before breaking into their homes, then bound their limbs before strangling them.

  After disappearing in 1988, BTK remerged in 2005 when he sent a floppy disc to the press, which was to be his downfall. Tracing him via the floppy disc, Rader was arrested, charged, and immediately confessed. He is serving 10 consecutive life sentences with an earliest possible release date of February 26, 2180.
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  (#5) Richard Ramirez

  • Dec. at 53 (1960-2013)

  Nickname: Night Stalker

  Ricardo Leyva "Richard" Muñoz Ramírez was an American slayer and Satan worshipper who terrorized Los Angeles between 1984 and 1985. Ramirez broke into the homes of many of his victims, shooting, stabbing, forcing himself on, and mutilating his victims who ranged from a 9-year-old girl and a married couple in their late 60s. Notably, he smeared pentagrams on the walls of the incidents.

  Captured in 1985, Ramirez was sentenced to capital punishment and remained on California’s row for 23 years until he passed in his cell (of cancer) in June 2013.
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  (#6) Dennis Nilsen

  • 77

  Nicknames: Muswell Hill Murderer, Kindly Killer

  The British equivalent of Jeffrey Dahmer, Nilsen was a gay killer who slayed 15 queer men in his home in London, England, between 1978 and 1983. He kept his victims’ corpses before dissecting their remains and disposing of their bodies by burning or flushing the remains down the toilet. This led to his capture, when human flesh was discovered in his sewage system.

  Nilsen was convicted in 1983 of six counts of murder and two counts of attempted murder and was sentenced to life imprisonment. He perished in prison in 2018 at age 72. 
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  (#7) Ted Bundy

  • Dec. at 42 (1946-1989)

  Nickname: Lady Killer

  One of the most widely known slayers of the 20th century, Ted Bundy was an American who snatched or overpowered numerous young women and girls during the 1970s, forcing himself on the women and slaying them. Bundy typically approached his female victims in a public place and led them to secluded areas where he would sexually assault and slay them. He decapitated at least 12 victims and kept the severed heads in his apartment as trophies.

  Repeatedly captured, he twice managed to escape from police and court houses before going on to commit three further slayings. Convicted of multiple slayings, he was sentenced to capital punishment in 1980. He was sentenced to the electric chair in 1989.
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  (#8) Andrei Chikatilo

  • Dec. at 57 (1936-1994)

  Nickname: The Butcher of Rostov

  Chikatilo was a Soviet slayer who committed the sexual assault, murder, and mutilation of at least 52 women and children in Russia between 1978 and 1990. Believing he was the killer, police carried out surveillance on Chikatilo, which eventually provided adequate grounds for an arrest.

  He confessed to a total of 56 slayings and was tried for 53 of them in April 1992. Victims' relatives demanded that authorities release him so they could end him themselves. However, he was convicted and sentenced to capital punishment for 52 of the slayings in October 1992. He was the subjected to a firing squad in February 1994.
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  (#9) Fritz Haarmann

  • Dec. at 45 (1879-1925)

  Nickname: The Butcher from Hanover

  Fritz Haarmann, an unassuming and sympathetic-looking man, used his friendly manner to serve him well as both a police informant and a sexual sadist. Over six years he murdered at least 24 vagrants and male harlots — slayings he considered an act of love. Haarman claimed he only wanted to bring peace to his victims and had a strict preference for boys he found handsome.

  It all came to an end when the discarded skulls of his victims began washing up on the shore of the river Leine in Germany. In 1925, while in prison awaiting to be beheaded, he was shown a photo of a missing boy whom the police believed Haarmann had slain. After one look at the ugly boy’s picture he scoffed at the idea of killing such an ungainly kid.
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  (#10) Joe Metheny

  Nickname: The Cannibal Killer

  Beginning in 1976, at the age of 21, Metheny would slay his victims and bury their bodies, sometimes stripping them for meat he would claim to use at his roadside open-pit food stand. The Cannibal Killer was said to have viewed his victims as meat rather than people and said that people couldn't tell the difference between the human meat and the pork he mixed it in with. 

  Metheny was caught in 1996 and later sentenced to end his life for the slayings of three women (though he confessed to stabbing or strangling a total of four women and three men), a ruling that would be overturned to a life sentence in 2000. He perished in prison in 2017 at the age of 62.
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  (#11) Harold Shipman

  • Dec. at 57 (1946-2004)

  Nickname: Doctor Death

  Dr. Harold Fredrick Shipman was a English doctor and is one of the most prolific slayers in recorded history, proven to have been responsible for up 250 murders. A trusted doctor, he was well respected in his community, however colleagues and local undertakers began raising concerns over the high perishing rate in the area and the large number of cremation forms for elderly women that he had countersigned. Several bodies were later exhumed and post mortems revealed diamorphine within their system.

  It was later established that Shipman had purposely injected fatal doses of the drug in a huge number of patients, causing their passings. He then forged their wills so he could inherit large sums of money and completed cremation requests to destroy the victim’s bodies. He was sentenced to 15 consecutive life sentences and it was recommended that he never be released. Shipman hanged himself in January 2004 in his cell at Wakefield Prison.
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  (#12) Jeffrey Dahmer

  • Dec. at 34 (1960-1994)

  Nickname: The Milwaukee Cannibal

  Dahmer was an American slayer and sex offender who forced himself on, slayed, and dismembered 17 men and boys between 1978 and 1991. He also committed necrophilia and ate parts of his later victims, dismembering and cooking parts of their bodies in his home.

  Dahmer was caught after a would-be victim managed to overpower him and alert police. In 1992 Dahmer was convicted of 15 of the incidents and sentenced to 15 terms of life imprisonment. However just two years into his sentence he was beaten until he was no longer breathing by a fellow inmate at the Columbia Correctional Institution.
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  (#13) Pedro López

  • 74

  Nickname: Monster of the Andes

  One of the scariest men in human history, Pedro Lopez was responsible for forcing himself on and slaying hundreds of women in Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru. He was caught in 1980 but only served 14 years in an Ecuadorian prison. Once he was released, he spent 3 years in a mental hospital in Colombia. He was declared sane in 1998 and released on $50 bail.

  Lopez is currently free and suspected of further murders in Colombia. His whereabouts are unknown. 
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  (#14) Gilles de Rais

  • Dec. at 36 (1404-1440)

  Nickname: The Sadistic Aristocrat

  Gilles de Rais slayed up to 600 people, though historical records are unreliable and de Rais’ corpse count cannot be proven. De Rais was a wealthy and powerful 15th century French nobleman who once fought side by side with Joan of Arc. He had a sick obsession with young boys and preferred victims who resembled himself as a child. He lured blond-haired, blue-eyed peasant boys to his stately home where he and a few assumed accomplices forced themselves on, tortured, and mutilated them.

  In 1440, the ecclesiastical court in Nantes hanged de Rais before torching his body.
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  (#15) Edmund Kemper

  • 74

  Nickname: The Co-Ed Killer

  Edmund Kemper is an American slayer and necrophile who carried out a series of brutal actions in California in the 1970s. He slayed his grandparents when he was 15 years old, then slayed and dismembered six female hitchhikers in the Santa Cruz area. He also slayed his mother and one of her friends before turning himself in days later.

  Kemper was found guilty in November 1973 on eight counts. He asked to pass by the hand of the government, but instead received life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.
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  (#16) Javed Iqbal

  • Dec. at 45 (1956-2001)

  Nickname: Killer of 100 Boys

  Hailing from Punjab, Pakistan, Javed Iqbal, arguably one of the most detested men in history, went to great lengths to surround himself with young boys. He opened video arcades, schools, aquariums, and gyms. Iqbal was arrested a number of times on charges of sodomy, but his father’s money always got him off. In his eventual confession he claimed to have slain 100 boys in just five months, drugging, forcing himself on, and strangling them, then chopping them into pieces. Iqbal would either store the bodies in a vat of acid near his house or dump them into the sewer.

  When the judge sentenced Iqbal to capital punishment in 2000, it was suggested that he be slain as his victims were. Official reports state that he took his own life while in prison, but an autopsy suggested he may have been slain. It was irrelevant to his family, as they refused to collect his remains, claiming he had perished, to them, the day he confessed.
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  (#17) John Wayne Gacy

  • Dec. at 52 (1942-1994)

  Nickname: Colonel, The Killer Clown

  Gacy sexually assaulted and slayed 33 teenage boys and young men between 1972 and 1978 in Chicago, Illinois. He lured victims to his home with the promise of work or money before slaying them by strangulation with a tourniquet. Gacy buried 26 of his victims in the crawl space under his home, before disposing of later victims in the Des Plaines River.

  Convicted of 33 slayings, Gacy was sentenced to capital punishment in 1980. He spent 14 years on row before he was slain by lethal injection on May 10, 1994.
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  (#18) Elizabeth Báthory

  • Dec. at 54 (1560-1614)

  Nickname: The Bloody Lady of Cachtice

  A sadistic 16th century countess, Bathory is still the most infamous slayer in the history of Hungary and Slovakia. In her own Hungarian castle, Báthory functioned with virtual impunity. She lured peasant girls to work as maids and enticed the daughters of lower nobility with lessons on etiquette, snaring her victims under false pretenses. With the help of a handful of accomplices, Báthory enjoyed starving, freezing, and torturing her victims. The Bloody Lady racked up a significant body count — estimated to be from 36 to as many as 200.

  The majority of her accomplices were slain by the government, but Báthory’s wealth and influence earned her the 16th century’s version of aristocratic house arrest: imprisonment in her own castle.
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  (#19) Arthur Shawcross

  • Dec. at 63 (1945-2008)

  Nickname: Genesee River Killer

  Shawcross first slayed in 1972, sexually assaulting and claiming the life of a 10-year-old boy after luring him into a wooded area in Watertown, New York. He then forced himself on and slayed an 8-year-old girl, for which he was captured and convicted of manslaughter. After serving 14 years imprisonment, he was released in 1988 and went on to brutally slay 12 female harlots aged between 22 and 59 years old.

  Eventually captured at the scene of his last incident, Shawcross confessed to all 12 slayings and was sentenced to 250 years imprisonment, though he perished in prison of cardiac arrest in 2008.
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  (#20) Tommy Lynn Sells

  • Dec. at 49 (1964-2014)

  Nickname: Coast to Coast, The Cross-Country Killer

  Claiming to have taken the lives of at least 70 people, Tommy Lynn Sells is considered one of the most dangerous men in Texas, and has been convicted of several brutal slayings between 1985 and 1999. These incidernts included the stabbing a 13 year old girl 16 times.

  Sells was eventually captured after breaking into the bedroom of a 10-year-old girl and stabbing her, leaving her to perish. Despite her injures, the girl survived and alerted her neighbors. She provided the police with a detailed description of Sells, eventually leading to his capture. Sells was sentenced to and received capital punishment in Texas in 2014.
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  (#21) Arnfinn Nesset

  • 86

  Nickname: Angel of Death

  Norwegian slayer Arnfinn Nesset was working as a nurse when he slayed 22 people and attempted to slay more. Throughout the '80s, Nesset poisoned his patients with a muscle relaxer. In Norwegian law, the maximum time of imprisonment was 21 years, however he only served 12 years of his sentence. He was released under parole terms, which have since expired.
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  (#22) Pedro Rodrigues Filho

  • 69

  Nickname: Pedrinho Matador (Killer Petey)

  Pedro Rodrigues Filho is a Brazilian man who slayed many. Arrested in 1973, he was convicted in 2003 of slaying at least 71 people and sentenced to 128 years imprisonment. Committing his first heinous act at the age of 14, he began a series of burglaries and carried out a spree against local drug dealers, in revenge for his girlfriend's perishment at the hand of inmates while he was in prison.

  By the age of 18 years old, he had slain 10 people. While imprisoned, he took the life of his own father who was also serving time for slaying. He went on to take the lives of at least 47 inmates while imprisoned. Initially sentenced to just 30 years imprisonment, his continued atrocities have led to further convictions and his sentence has been increased to 400 years.
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  (#23) Donald Henry Gaskins

  • Dec. at 58 (1933-1991)

  Nickname: PeeWee

  In 1969, Gaskins began slaying a series of hitchhikers he picked up while driving around the coastal highways of the American South, torturing and mutilating his victims. He claimed to have slain between 80 and 90 people. He was arrested in 1975 when an associate confessed to police that he had witnessed Gaskins slaying two young men.

  Gaskins was convicted of eight slayings and sentenced to perish. This was later commuted to life imprisonment without parole. He went on to commit another slaying within the high security prison, this time it was a fellow inmate. 
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  (#24) John George Haigh

  • Dec. at 40 (1909-1949)

  Nickname: Acid Bath Murderer

  John George Haigh, an English man, was convicted of the slayings of six people, although he claimed to have slain nine. A professional conman, he targeted wealthy individuals and charmed them into believing he was a successful businessman. He lured his victims to a derelict warehouse before shooting them. He then dissolved their bodies in sulphuric acid before forging papers in order to sell their possessions and collect their life savings.

  Traces of human remains were found and authorities had sufficient evidence to convict him. In 1949 he was sentenced hanged at Wandsworth Prison in London.
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  (#25) Karl Denke

  • Dec. at 64 (1860-1924)

  Nickname: The Ziębice Cannibal

  Everyone knew and seemed to like Karl Denke at first. He was a "good" Christian and supported himself with a small business selling a variety of goods door to door. He was held in such high regard that he was known affectionately as Papa Denke. But in December of 1924, a man stumbled into police headquarters claiming Denke had accosted him with an axe. Although police initially found this impossible to believe, Denke was arrested and put in jail.

  As authorities went to search his home, he took his own life. This should have been their first clue to Ziebice Cannibal’s murderous history. The body count, composed mostly of beggars and journeymen to whom Denke extended the courtesy of a place to stay, reached anywhere from 20 to 40.
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  (#26) Karla Homolka

  • 53

  Nickname: Barbie

  Karla Homolka was one half of the murderous couple that haunted the people of Canada. Homolka, along with her husband Paul Bernardo, forced themselves on and slayed multiple women, including her own sister.

  When the couple was discovered in 1993, Homolka turned over evidence on her husband in exchange for a reduced sentence. She was released in 2005 after serving just 12 years in prison.
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  (#27) Peter Manuel

  • Dec. at 31 (1927-1958)

  Nickname: Beast of Birkenshaw

  This American-born Scottish man is known to have slain nine people across southern Scotland between 1956 and 1958. Manuel is suspected of having killed as many as 18 people. Police were unable to prove his guilt until his final slayings, when some banknotes Manuel had been using to pay for drinks in Glasgow pubs were proven to be stolen from one of his victims.

  Manuel confessed to these after his mother confronted him at the police station where he was being held. Manuel was hanged at Glasgow’s Barlinnie Prison in July 1958. He was one of the last prisoners to be hanged in Scotland before they ended capital punishment.
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  (#28) Nikolai Dzhumagaliev

  • 70

  Nickname: Metal Fang

  Cannibal Nikolai Dzhumagaliev slayed and ate the remains of at least seven women (with the number probably closer to 50) in the Soviet Union. He received his nickname after he replaced his real teeth with white, metal teeth.

  Dzhumagaliev was caught in 1980, escaped in 1989, was recaptured and then released after 10 years of psychological evaluation.
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  (#29) Gerard John Schaefer

  • Dec. at 49 (1946-1995)

  Nickname: The Florida Sex Beast

  As a boy, Gerard John Schaefer’s hobbies included torturing animals until they couldn't breathe, wearing women's underwear, and peeping through windows. Despite his strange childhood activities, he eventually became a Florida cop. While on patrol, Schaefer used his badge to abduct two teenage girls, but they escaped before he could assault and slay them. Claiming he was trying to teach the girls not to hitchhike, he called his sergeant to say he’d done “something foolish.”

  Schaefer was fired and arrested, but while out on bail he sexually assaulted and killed two other teenage girls. Police put the two incidents together and Schaefer was given two life sentences.
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  (#30) Peter Sutcliffe

  Nickname: The Yorkshire Ripper

  Peter William Sutcliffe is a British man who was convicted in 1981 of slaying 13 women and attempting to slay seven others. He targeted harlots in the Leeds and Bradford areas causing a climate of fear across northern England. When arrested in January 1981 for driving with false license plates, police questioned him about the women, and he confessed.

  At his trial, he pleaded not guilty to murder on grounds of diminished responsibility, but his defense was rejected by the jury. He was sentenced to life imprisonment without parole and remains in Broadmoor Maximum Security Mental Hospital to this day.
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  (#31) Mary Bell

  • 66

  Nickname: British Bad Seed

  When Mary Bell was just 11 years old, she had already taken the lives of two young boys in separate incidents by strangling them and mutilating one with scissors. She was convicted of manslaughter in 1968. Twelve years later, when she was 23, Bell was freed and able to change her name to start a new life.

  She won a court order that permanently protects her identity and that of her daughter — a protection for convicts now known as a "Mary Bell Order." 
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  (#32) Hélène Jégado

  • Dec. at 49 (1803-1852)

  Nickname: The Pious Poisoner

  Jegado was a domestic servant in 19th century France and if someone irked her, she didn’t give them many opportunities to apologize. From 1833 to 1841, at least 36 people — the vast majority of them employers or boarders — wound up perishing from arsenic poisoning. Because of her devout and sincere nature, authorities routinely ruled her out as a suspect.

  In 1851, when she hastily declared her innocence without actually being accused, Jegado was arrested and convicted of at least three slayings. A year later, she was executed by guillotine.
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  (#33) Louis Van Schoor

  Nickname: The Hammerman

  In South Africa, Louis Van Schoor salyed at least seven men who he claimed were burglars. After each incident, he was cleared by officials without so much as a caution. However, he was finally discovered in 1992.

  After serving only 12 years, he was released in 2004.
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  (#34) Larry Bittaker And Roy Norris

  Nickname: The Tool Box Killers

  Lawrence Bittaker and Roy Norris are two American who together slayed five young women in California in 1979. The duo lured victims into their van and drove them to secluded areas where they both sexually assaulted and tortured them horrifically with a number of tools before murdering them.

  In 1981, Bittaker and Norris were charged with slaying, absucting, and assault. Bittaker was sentenced to capital punishment and remains on row to this day. Norris was spared capital punishment in return for his testimony against Bittaker and was sentenced to 45 years in prison.
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  (#35) Bartolomeo Gagliano

  Nickname: St. Valentine's Beast

  Italian slayer Bartolomeo Gagliano was responsible for the slayings of at least three harlots in the late '80s. He was sentenced to eight years in an asylum before the slayings of two of his victims, but he broke out with a fellow inmate in time to kill two harlots on Valentine's Day, 1989. He said he was targeting people who spread the HIV virus.

  In December 2013, Gagliano escaped prison again in Genoa, Italy, while out on day release. He was arrested a few days later in France. He took his own life in 2015.
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  (#36) Ian Brady And Myra Hindley

  Nickname: Moors Murders

  Ian Brady and Myra Hindley took the lives of five children between 1963 and 1965, in Greater Manchester, England. The atrocities were known as the Moors Murders. Aged between 10 and 17 years old, their victims were sexually assaulted before being brutally slain. Three of the victims were discovered in graves dug on Saddleworth Moor and the last victim's body was found at Brady’s house. The whereabouts of the fourth victim, Keith Bennett, remain unknown.

  Both Brady and Hindley were later sentenced to life imprisonment. Hindley perished in prison in 2002. Brady has since been confined in the maximum security Ashworth Hospital.
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  (#37) Kenneth Bianchi And Angelo Buono

  Nickname: The Hillside Stranglers

  Between late 1977 and early 1978 cousins Kenneth Bianchi and Angelo Buono carried out a reign of terror in California, abducting, assaulting, and slaying 10 girls aged between 12 and 28 years old, strangling each victim in the hills above Los Angeles, leading to their nickname.

  Bianchi attempted to plead not guilty by way of insanity but was found to be faking mental illness, so instead agreed to plead guilty and testify against Buono. Both were sentenced to life imprisonment. Buono perished of a heart attack in his cell in 2002, and Bianchi remains imprisoned in the state of Washington.
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  (#38) Nikita Fouganthine

  • 58

  Nickname: Baseline Killer

  Swedish man Nikita Fouganthine (born Jua Veikko Valjakkala) slayed three people in 1988. He was caught soon after and convicted. Although he received a life sentence in a Finnish prison, he escaped in 1994. During his brief time of freedom, he held a teacher hostage but was caught soon after.

  He escaped and was caught again three more times in 2002, 2004, and 2006. In 2011, Fouganthine escaped from prison.
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  (#39) Daniel Camargo Barbosa

  • Dec. at 64 (1930-1994)

  Nickname: The Vampire of Sacramento

  Camargo was a Colombian who is believed to have assaulted and slain more than 150 young girls in Colombia and Ecuador during the 1970s and 1980s. He calmly confessed to slaying 71 girls in Ecuador after escaping from a Colombian prison. He led authorities to the dumping grounds of those victims whose bodies had not yet been recovered. After sexually assaulting his victims, he had hacked the girls with a machete.

  He was convicted in 1989 and sentenced to just 16 years in prison, the maximum sentence available in Ecuador. In November 1994, he was slain in prison by the cousin of one of his victims.
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  (#40) Fred And Rose West

  Nickname: Ma Baker

  Between 1967 and 1987, Fred West and his wife Rose tortured, assaulted, and slayed at least 11 young women and girls. Many of the incidents took place at the couple’s home at 25 Cromwell Street in Gloucester, which was later nicknamed the House of Horrors. Rose earned her nickname due to the fact that she was compiling a cookbook at the time the murders began.

  The pair was finally apprehended and charged in 1994 after police obtained a search warrant and located several human bones buried within the garden and under the floor boards. During his trial, Fred West hanged himself in his prison cell prior to being convicted. In 1995 Rose West was jailed for life, having been found guilty on 10 counts. 
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  (#41) Charles Ng

  • 62

  Nickname: Cricket
   
  A Chinese-American, Charles Ng is believed to have assaulted, tortured, and murdered between 11 and 25 victims with his accomplice Leonard Lake at Lake’s ranch in Calaveras County, California. They filmed themselves torturing their victims. Their incidents became known in 1985 when Lake took his own life after being arrested and Ng was caught shoplifting at a hardware store.

  Police searched Lake’s ranch and found human remains. Ng was identified as Lake’s partner and attempted to evade police by fleeing to Canada. After a lengthy extradition to the United States, he stood trial in 1998 on 12 counts and was convicted in 1999. Ng is currently waiting to receive capital punishment at San Quentin State Prison in California.

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