Henry Lee Lucas, also known as The Confession Killer, was an American convicted murderer. Lucas was convicted of murdering his mother in 1960 and two others in 1983. He rose to infamy as a claimed serial killer while incarcerated for these crimes when he falsely confessed to approximately six hundred other murders to Texas Rangers and other law enforcement officials. Many unsolved cases were closed based on the confessions and the murders officially attributed to Lucas. Lucas was convicted of murdering eleven people and condemned to death for a single case with a then-unidentified victim, later identified as Debra Jackson.
Chester Dewayne Turner is an American serial killer and sex offender who was sentenced to death for sexually assaulting and murdering fourteen women and an unborn baby in Los Angeles between 1987 and 1998.
William Richard Bradford was an American convicted murderer and suspected serial killer and serial rapist who was incarcerated in San Quentin State Prison for the 1984 murders of his 15-year-old neighbor Tracey Campbell and barmaid Shari Miller. In July 2006, the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department released a compilation of photos found in Bradford's apartment in the 1980s, depicting 54 different women in modelling poses. As Bradford had used the promise of a modelling career to lure his known victims, and taken pictures of Miller before murdering her, police believe many of the photos depict Bradford's other victims in the moments before their deaths. Bradford died at the Vacaville prison medical facility on March 10, 2008, of natural causes.
Christopher Bernard Wilder, also known as the Beauty Queen Killer and the Snapshot Killer, was an Australian-American serial killer who abducted at least twelve young women and girls, killing eight of them during a six-week, cross-country crime spree in the United States in early 1984. Wilder's series of murders began in Florida on February 26, 1984, and continued across the country through Texas, Oklahoma, Colorado, Nevada and California, with attempted abductions in Washington and New York. Wilder victimized attractive young women, most of whom he would entice by promising to take their pictures. After subduing them, he would torture and rape them before shooting, stabbing with a knife, or strangling them to death. Two or more of his victims were electrocuted using a makeshift electrical cord.
The Alphabet murders are an unsolved series of child murders which occurred between 1971 and 1973 in Rochester, New York.
Robert Joseph "Bobby Joe" Long was an American serial killer and rapist who was executed by the state of Florida for the murder of Michelle Denise Simms. Long abducted, sexually assaulted, and murdered at least ten women in the Tampa Bay area in Florida during an eight-month period in 1984. He released 17-year-old Lisa McVey after 26 hours. McVey provided critical information to the police that enabled them to arrest Long.
Daniel Owen Conahan Jr. is a convicted American murderer, rapist, and suspected serial killer. Conahan was convicted of one murder, but has been linked to a dozen murders, mostly of transients seeking employment and gay men in the Charlotte County, Florida area in what came to be known as the Hog Trail Murders. Conahan has also been named the prime suspect in the additional murders of eight men, collectively referred to as the Fort Myers Eight, who were discovered in a mass grave site in 2007.
Lonnie David Franklin Jr., better known by the nickname Grim Sleeper, was an American serial killer who was responsible for at least ten murders and one attempted murder in Los Angeles, California from 1984 to 2007. He was also convicted for rape and sexual violence. Franklin earned his nickname when he appeared to have taken a 14-year break from his crimes, from 1988 to 2002.
Faryion Edward Wardrip is an American rapist and serial killer who assaulted and murdered a total of five women. Four of the women were killed in Wichita Falls, Texas, and the surrounding counties. One woman was murdered in Fort Worth, approximately a two-hour drive southeast of Wichita Falls. Wardrip's killing spree began at the end of 1984 and lasted until the middle of 1986. All of his female victims were white, were between the ages of 20 and 25, weighed less than 120 pounds (54 kg), and were under 5+1⁄2 feet (170 cm) tall.
The Speed Freak Killers is the name given to serial killer duo Loren Herzog and Wesley Shermantine, together initially convicted of four murders — three jointly — and suspected in the deaths of as many as 72 people in and around San Joaquin County, California based on a letter Shermantine wrote to a reporter in 2012. They received the "speed freak" moniker due to their habitual methamphetamine abuse. Herzog committed suicide in 2012. Shermantine remains on death row in San Quentin State Prison, in San Quentin, California.
The Flat-Tire murders were a series of unsolved murders in Broward and Miami-Dade Counties, Florida, occurring between February 1975 and January 1976. The name originated from the investigators' belief that, when the offender committed two of the murders, he had deflated the tires of the victims' cars. The list of suspected victims ultimately included twelve girls and women whose bodies were discovered in or near South Florida canals. The murders were the subject of a 2021 book entitled The Flat Tire Murders: Unsolved Crimes of a South Florida Serial Killer.
Sherri Ann Jarvis was an American murder victim from Forest Lake, Minnesota whose body was discovered in Huntsville, Texas on November 1, 1980. Her body was discovered within hours of her sexual assault and murder, and remained unidentified for 41 years before investigators announced her identification via forensic genealogy in November 2021.
Carol Ann Cole was a 17-year-old American homicide victim whose body was discovered in early 1981 in Bellevue, Bossier Parish, Louisiana. The victim remained unidentified until 2015, when DNA tests confirmed her identity. Cole, native to Kalamazoo, Michigan, had been missing from San Antonio, Texas since 1980. Cole's killing remains unsolved, although the investigation is continuing.
The murder of Angela Samota occurred on October 13, 1984, when she was attacked while in her apartment, raped and killed. The case remained unsolved until DNA evidence surfaced in the 2000s, following which charges were brought against a convicted rapist, Donald Andrew Bess Jr., who was subsequently tried and received a death sentence. He died of natural causes while awaiting execution in October 2022.
Jack Harold Jones Jr. was an American serial killer who murdered at least three women in Florida and Arkansas between 1983 and 1995. Convicted of two murders during his lifetime and executed in 2017, he was posthumously linked via DNA to the third murder, for which another man was imprisoned.
Othram is an American corporation specializing in forensic genetic genealogy to resolve unsolved murders, disappearances, and identification of unidentified decedents or murder victims. The company also offers law enforcement agencies tools and programs to infer kinship among individuals, both closely and distantly related, through a combination of short tandem repeat and single nucleotide polymorphism testing, as well as forensic genome sequencing of DNA.
The 1996 Raleigh murders were a series of six murders and several rapes targeted towards female residents of the Raleigh, North Carolina area occurring from January to December 1996. Authorities, at the time, believed the killings to be the work of a serial killer, and the cases were investigated under that belief. During the investigation a homeless drifter named John Williams Jr. was arrested for two of the murders, for which he was later tried and convicted, and authorities declared him the prime suspect in the other cases. As other evidence emerged, it was revealed that multiple people perpetrated the murders as Leaman Evans was convicted for the sole murder of Dewanna Burt. The other three murders of Dawn Grandy, Cynthia Brown and Patricia Woods are still unsolved.
The Great Basin Murders is the name given to a series of murders of at least nine women committed between 1983 and 1997 across the states of Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, and Idaho. It derives its name from the Great Basin geographical area, as most of the victims had their bodies dumped near interstate highways that transverse it.
Robert Sylvester Alston is an American serial killer who raped and murdered at least four women in Greensboro, North Carolina from 1991 to 1993, whose bodies he then dismembered and buried in various locations. He made anonymous phone calls to investigators about the crimes in an attempt to confuse them and gain media attention. He pleaded guilty to all charges in 1998 and received multiple life terms.
James Phillip Barnes was an American murderer and self-identified serial killer who was executed by the state of Florida for the 1988 rape and murder of Patricia Miller. After converting to Islam and saying that he wanted to clear his conscience, he confessed to the murder in 2005, while already serving a life sentence for the 1997 murder of his wife.
