The following is a list of serial killers i.e. a person who murders more than one person,[1] in two or more separate events over a period of time, for primarily psychological reasons[2][3] who began committing their crimes before 1900. This list does not include mass murderers, spree killers, war criminals, or members of democidal governments. This list is chronological by default, but can be re-ordered using the button at the top of each column.
Prince of Jidong during the reign of Emperor Jing, his uncle. Helped by slaves, he attacked civilians in his lands during the night, killing over a hundred. Although the court advised the Emperor to execute him, the emperor only reduced him to a commoner and exiled him to Shangyong (modern Zhushan County, Hubei Province).[5]
An unnamed man from Karkh, Baghdad, strangled a number of women and buried them in his house. After his arrest, he was tortured to death; his remains were publicly displayed and later burned.[8]
French nobleman accused of torturing and murdering over 140 children.[10] Rais and several accomplices in the murders were hanged on 26 October 1440.[11]
A pair of Frenchmen who confessed to killing and eating several children. They claimed to have committed the murders in wolf form after making a pact with a witch coven. Burned at the stake.[12]
"The Werewolf of Bedburg." Confessed under torture to murdering and cannibalizing 14 children, including his son, and two pregnant women. Broken on the wheel, beheaded and burned.[14]
Bandit leader who confessed under torture to killing 544 people, including the murder of 24 women and the use of their unborn children in black magic. Broken on the wheel and quartered alive.[15]
Hermit known as "The Werewolf of Dole." Confessed to strangling four children and eating their flesh.[18] Garnier was caught attacking a young boy and burned at the stake in 1573.[19]
Scottish bandit active in the East English March. Confessed to having killed seven Englishmen and "lain with above forty men's wives, what in England, what in Scotland." Executed by unknown means.[23]
A French tailor accused of killing and eating 50 children in Châlons-en-Champagne whose remains had been found in his house. The brutality of the crimes and the accused's repeated psychotic episodes led authorities to accuse him of being a werewolf. Burned at the stake.[24]
A French teenager and self-proclaimed werewolf, Jean confessed to killing and eating 50 children while in wolf form. At his trial, it was decided that Grenier was a weak-minded lunatic rather than a denizen of the devil. The court sentenced Grenier to life imprisonment at a monastery in Bourdeaux. Died in 1611.[26]
Aristocrat nicknamed La Quintrala, possibly after the local red-flowered mistletoe (quintral) and because of her long red hair. Investigated for the deaths of 40 servants and slaves on her property but never tried or convicted. Died of natural causes in 1665.[27]
A group of female poisoners active in Palermo, Rome, and Naples. Ring leader was claimed to be Giulia Tofana although the only evidence of a poisoning ring is the executions of Teofania di Adamo (1633) and Girolama Spara (1659), claimed, respectively, to be the mother and daughter of Giulia Tofana.[28]
The "Melcher Shooter." Highwayman and alleged cannibal who was known for killing his victims with a rifle and then mutilating the corpses with a Turkish saber. Captured 1653 and executed in 1654 after confessing to 251 murders.[29][30]
Former mercenary in the Swedish Army turned highwayman who was active in the Eilenriede forest, then outside Hanover. Usually shot people from a distance before knowing whether they had any money. Confessed to the murder of 19 people, including his "robber bride," and was broken on the wheel.[31]
Known as "La Voisin." Alleged sorceress, fortune-teller, cult leader and poisoner for hire who confessed under torture to the ritual murder of over a thousand infants in black masses.[32] Also tried to poison Louis XIV. She was convicted, along with 35 others, as part of the Affair of the Poisons, and burned at the stake in 1680.
Lovers who poisoned d'Aubrey's father and two brothers to inherit their estates, and an undetermined number of poor people in hospitals. Sainte-Croix died of natural causes in 1672, but d'Aubrey was tried, beheaded and burned at the stake in 1676. Her sensational trial led to the Affair of the Poisons.
A samurai and serial killer from the Edo period. At the age of 18, he murdered a colleague of his father and fled to Edo (now Tokyo), where he murdered as many as 130 people during robberies. He later turned himself in and was executed in December 1679.[citation needed]
Scottish doctor and rancher known as "The Mad Master" and "The Mad Doctor of Edinburgh Castle." Shot and robbed passersby of all types on his property, sometimes with the help of accomplices, after which the slaves threw the bodies in Hutchinson's Hole, where they were devoured by animals. Hanged.[36]
Also known as "Darkey Kelly." Dublinbrothel owner hanged and burned at the stake for the murder of a client. Four skeletons were found in her establishment after her execution.[37][38]
Baby farmer accused of having murdered 33 infants, taken from the "foundling wheel" in the town of Coimbra, Portugal. She only confessed to 28 of the homicides. Executed by garrote. She was the last woman executed in Portugal.[39][40]
Also called El Negro Incógnito ("The Unknown Negro"). Blamed for up to 29 murders or more, plus 27 injured, mill and plantation fires and animal deaths. The human victims, of all types but mostly women and children, were mutilated, had objects introduced into their orifices and could have been cannibalized in some cases. The killer, possibly more than one person, never robbed the victims. Several suspects were arrested, sentenced to forced work on plantations or executed.[43]
Leader of the Thuggee cult of murder-robbers in central India, also known as Buhram Jemedar and the "King of the Thugs." Behram is often cited as one of the most prolific serial killers in history (if not the most) with up to 931 victims, although he only admitted to having been present for that many murders, committing 125 himself and witnessing 150 or more.[45] Thuggee victims were travellers that the Thuggees latched to and befriended before strangling them with a ceremonial handkerchief (rumal) and stealing their belongings. Hanged by officers of the East India Company as part of the British colonialThuggee and Dacoity Suppression Acts, 1836–1848
Highwaymen and river pirates known as "Big" and "Little" Harpe, or the Harpe Brothers, who often killed people of all types for the thrill or minor slights without actual monetary gain, even babies. "Big" Harpe bashed his own infant daughter's head against a tree because her crying annoyed him; this was the only murder he claimed to feel sorry about. "Big" Harpe was shot and beheaded in 1799 by people who sought vengeance for the murder of a woman, while "Little" Harpe was arrested when he took fellow outlaw Samuel Mason's head to the authorities and tried to collect a bounty put on him in 1803, but was recognized, tried and hanged in 1804.[48]
Highwayman and river pirate sometimes associated with the Harpe Brothers and other outlaws. After being arrested in Louisiana and turned over to American authorities, Mason overpowered his guards and escaped, but was shot in the process. His head was later given to the authorities by his accomplice, Wiley Harpe, who wished to collect the bounty on the fugitive Mason. It is unknown if Mason died of his injuries or Harpe killed him.[49]
Prussian aristocrat who poisoned her lover, husband, and aunt, and tried to poison an unhappy servant, always with arsenic. Sentenced to life in prison but pardoned in 1833. Died of natural causes three years later.[50]
Kidnapped slaves and free blacks in the Delmarva Peninsula and sold them to slavers down south. Cannon, reportedly aroused by the sight of black males being beaten into submission, was arrested when four skeletons (three children, one male adult) were found buried in her property, though most of the gang's victims were probably rival white slavers. Cannon died in prison while awaiting trial, under unclear circumstances.[51]
"The Yorkshire Witch." Leeds career con woman and thief, hanged in 1809 for the arsenic poisoning of a married couple she had been scamming (the husband survived). Suspect in three more deaths.[52]
The owners, Pierre and Marie Martin, and a valet, Jean Rochette, were believed at the time to have murdered up to 50 or more travellers that stayed in their inn in Lanarce, Ardèche[53] to rob them, but were tried for only one murder that has been questioned since by historians. All three were guillotined in front of the inn in 1833.[54][55]
Samurai serial killer from the Edo period who stabbed seven disabled and homeless people to death and seriously injured seven others between January and March in order to hone his spear skills. He was arrested on suspicion of stealing merchandise from a store, and after being dragged around the city, he was executed by hanging on April 23.[56][57]
"The Bavarian Ripper." Invited young women into his house under the pretense of showing them a "magic mirror" where they could see their future husbands. He blindfolded them and bound their hands behind their backs, which he said was necessary for the ritual, and then hit them in the head, stabbed them in the neck and hacked them to pieces with an axe while they were still alive, burying their bodies in the mountains or under the woodshed in his own home. He kept his victims' clothing, which ended up incriminating him. Sentenced to break at the wheel, later changed to decapitation, and executed in 1809.[58]
Bushrangers fugitive of a British penal colony in the Tamar Valley who murdered three soldiers, a fellow fugitive and at least one Aboriginal Tasmanian. Lemon was killed by bounty hunters in 1808, who also captured Brown. Brown was taken to Sydney, where he was hanged.[59]
Housekeeper who poisoned her employers with arsenic and nursed them back to health to gain their favor; three died. Sentenced to beheading in 1811, which she welcomed as the only way to keep herself from poisoning people.
Irish sailor who murdered two families and their servants in London's East End by bashing their heads with a hammer and cutting their throats. Hanged himself in prison while awaiting trial.[32]
Believed today to have suffered from Munchausen syndrome by proxy, as she poisoned several of her relatives and friends with arsenic for no apparent reason. Last person publicly executed in Bremen, where she was beheaded in 1831.[60]
According to Livy, there is a story that several Roman men died in what was believed to be a plague, until a servant woman revealed that they had been poisoned by a conspiracy of matrons. According to this story, twenty patrician women arrested admitted to preparing concoctions but claimed that they were medicinal; when they drank it themselves to prove it (at their own suggestion), they died immediately. The story states that a total of 170 matrons were arrested. Livy says that "their act was regarded as a prodigy, and suggested madness rather than felonious intent."[63]
"The Jarmans of Colnbrook." Claimed to have murdered between 13 and 60 people at the Ostrich Inn of Colnbrook in the Middle Ages. Though the building is real (and still stands), it only dates to the 1500s, and the most famous description of the killers' modus, involving a trapdoor in a bedroom that opened to a boiling pot in the kitchens beneath, is first described in a fiction work, Thomas Deloney's Thomas of Reading (1602).[64]
Barber and baker duo said to have murdered, robbed and butchered 143 men in Paris; Cabard, the barber, slashed the throats of his clients while shaving them and threw their bodies in a subterranean gallery through a trapdoor, where Miquelon took their meat to make pies.[66] Claimed sometimes to be the historical inspiration of Sweeney Todd and his ally Mrs. Lovett, but there is no record of them before Charles Dupressoir's Drames Judiciaires (1849), published three years after Todd's introduction in The String of Pearls. Mary Elliott's The Tell Tale (1824) details a similar story about a Parisian barber and wig-maker executed during the reign of Napoleon I, but they are not mentioned in the works of Joseph Fouché, the Paris police chief at the time.[67]
Claimed German bandit who was executed for 964 murders, according to a 1581 pamphlet. Possibly inspired by real bandit Peter Niers, who confessed under torture to 544 deaths and was executed in the same year, although similar characters appear in German fairy tales and folk songs from before that time.[68]
Claimed cannibal family that robbed, killed and ate travellers in a cave at Bennane Head until their manhunt and execution by James VI. Contemporary documents make no reference to the hundreds of disappearances and murders said to have been carried out by Bean's clan, which was probably inspired by the earlier legend of Christie-Cleek.[69]
Supposedly married and murdered women in order to steal their money. Confessed under torture to 19 murders before being executed by being torn apart with red-hot pincers over a three-day period. The only account of the case comes from an unsigned pamphlet of dubious historicity which relates the lives of Fleischer and fellow medieval serial killers Christman Genipperteinga and Peter Niers.
Juan Manuel de Solorzano, Count of La Torre Cosío and La Cortina
Legendary criollo nobleman under the rule of ViceroyMarquis of Cadereyta said to have murdered several men after mistaking them for a political enemy that had also seduced his wife,[70][71] and later killed himself during his forced reclusion in a convent.[72]His attributed residence in Mexico City was not built until more than a century after his supposed death in 1641.
Urban legends state that Fisher was the first female serial killer in the United States. She is supposed to have run an inn with her husband, John, where travellers were convinced to stay the night and then murdered while they slept in order to rob them. No evidence that such murders actually took place has been found; the legend of John and Lavinia Fisher appears to have been inspired by two highway robbers of that name who were hanged in 1820 for leading a gang which assaulted and robbed guests at their inn but did not murder them.[73]
Legendary figure who supposedly poisoned three husbands and a number of lovers and tortured slaves to death for sexual pleasure before being killed in a slave uprising in 1831. The story was recorded as historical fact by some writers, but modern research has proved it to be a complete fiction.[74]
Bibliomaniac ex-monk and librarian said to have killed ten men in Barcelona in order to steal unique books and add them to his collection, sentenced for his crimes to die by garrote. The story, first published as an anonymous article in an 1836 Parisian newspaper, was reprinted as a true story in France for a century, while remaining largely unknown in Spain.[75]
Tavern owner in the Blue Mountains who local legend claims was long suspected of murdering some of his guests for their money. Allegedly confessed to at least 11 murders before dying from natural causes in 1879. No record of such crimes can be found before 1938, when Maurice Broun compiled local legends about Schambacher while serving as curator of Hawk Mountain Sanctuary.[76]
Co-proprietor of "Bartlett's Inn," which was a scam she ran with her father Jim to lure businessmen and other white male travelers with valuables, most often gold. They were seduced by Polly into sex, who fed them steaks and whiskey laced with arsenic to kill them, before their valuables were lifted from their person. The father of one victim called the police to the site, who found the bodies buried in the stables after the Bartletts fled. An attempted victim shot Jim and arrested Polly, who was shot and killed in her prison cell by one of the father's employees, who was never charged.[77] The story originated in a 1963 article in Real West magazine and is now generally considered to be a folk tale rather than actual history.[78]
Family claimed to have owned a hotel and store on the Cariboo Road of British Columbia during the Cariboo Gold Rush, where they killed miners for their gold and kidnapped women and forced them into sex trafficking against their will until their arrest and death in prison in New Westminster. The story comes from a single source, and there are no records of disappearances in the area at the time of the murders or existing death certificates of the supposed serial killers apprehended.[79]
Also called "The Managua Killer." Alleged unidentified serial killer who murdered and mutilated six prostitutes in the periphery of Managua. In 2005, Trevor Marriott proposed that the Managua Killer and Jack the Ripper were one and the same, a merchant sailor that worked on the route between Britain and the Caribbean.[80][81]
↑Hough, Richard M.; McCorkle, Kimberly D. (2016). American Homicide. SAGE Publications. ISBN978-1-4391-3885-4. Archived from the original on 20 January 2021. Retrieved 2 September 2020. [...] Serial killing has been defined by different researchers or groups as either two or more, three or more or even four or more people killed over at least one month with a cooling off period between each of the murders.
↑A serial killer is most commonly defined as a person who kills three or more people for psychological gratification; reliable sources over the years agree. See, for example:
"Serial killer". The Free Dictionary. Retrieved 15 June 2016. A person who murders 3+ people over a period of > 30 days, with an inactive period between each murder, and whose motivation for killing is largely based on psychological gratification.
Holmes, Ronald M.; Holmes, Stephen T. (1998). Contemporary Perspectives on Serial Murder. SAGE Publications. p. 1. ISBN978-0-7619-1421-1. Retrieved 15 June 2016. Serial murder is the killing of three or more people over a period of more than 30 days, with a significant cooling-off period between the murders [...] The baseline number of three victims appears to be most common among those who are the academic authorities in the field. The time frame also appears to be an agreed-upon component of the definition.
R. Barri Flowers (2012). The Dynamics of Murder: Kill or Be Killed. CRC Press. p. 195. ISBN978-1-4398-7974-0. Retrieved 15 June 2016. In general, most experts on serial murder require that a minimum of three murders be committed at different times and usually different places for a person to qualify as a serial killer.
Harold Schechter (2012). The A to Z Encyclopedia of Serial Killers. Simon and Schuster. p. 73. ISBN978-1-4391-3885-4. Retrieved 15 June 2016. Most experts seem to agree, however, that to qualify as a serial killer, an individual has to slay a minimum of three unrelated victims.
↑Jonas Eberhardt; Jörg Brückner (2001). A thousand devils, the long Jörg and other bad boys (in German). Vol. 12. Neue Wernigeröder Zeitung. p. 22.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: unrecognized language (link)
↑Helmut Zimmermann: Hanebuth, Jasper. In: Stadtlexikon Hannover, S. 252
↑ 32.032.132.232.3Ramsland, Katherine (2005). The Human Predator. The Berkley Publishing Group, New York City.
↑David L. Smith, 'The infamous seventh earl of Pembroke, 1653–1683' (a sub-section of 'Herbert, Philip, first earl of Montgomery and fourth earl of Pembroke (1584–1650), courtier and politician') in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (OUP, 2004)
↑"Leyenda de Don Juan Manuel de Solorzano" [Legend of Don Juan Manuel de Solorzano]. Ciudadanos en red.com (in Spanish). METRÓPOLI 2025. 25 November 2010. Retrieved 26 September 2015.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: unrecognized language (link)
↑"La Calle de Don Juan Manuel" [The street of Don Juan Manuel]. leyendascoloniales.mx.tl (in español). José Ricardo Guarneros Rico. Retrieved 26 September 2015.
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