A serial killer is a person who murders three or more people, with the killings taking place over a significant period of time in separate events. Their psychological gratification is the motivation for the killings, and many serial murders involve sexual contact with the victims at different points during the murder process. The United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) states that the motives of serial killers can include anger, thrill-seeking, financial gain, and attention seeking, and killings may be executed as such. The victims tend to have things in common, such as demographic profile, appearance, gender, or race. As a group, serial killers suffer from a variety of personality disorders. Most are often not adjudicated as insane under the law. Although a serial killer is a distinct classification that differs from that of a mass murderer, spree killer, or contract killer, there are overlaps between them.
Wayne Bertram Williams is an American convicted murderer and suspected serial killer who is serving life imprisonment for the 1981 killings of two men in Atlanta, Georgia. Although never tried for the additional murders, he is also believed to be responsible for at least 24 of the 30 Atlanta murders of 1979–1981, also known as the Atlanta Child Murders.
The Zodiac Killer is the pseudonym of an unidentified serial killer who murdered five known victims in the San Francisco Bay Area between December 1968 and October 1969. The case has been described as "arguably the most famous unsolved murder case in American history," and has become both a fixture of popular culture and a focus for efforts by amateur detectives.
The Atlanta murders of 1979–1981, sometimes called the Atlanta child murders, are a series of murders committed in Atlanta, Georgia, between July 1979 and May 1981. Over the two-year period, at least 28 children, adolescents, and adults were killed. Wayne Williams, an Atlanta native who was 23 years old at the time of the last murder, was arrested, tried, and convicted of two of the adult murders and sentenced to two consecutive life terms.
Jacob Erwin Wetterling was an American boy from St. Joseph, Minnesota, who was kidnapped from his hometown and murdered on October 22, 1989, at the age of 11. The identity of his abductor remained a mystery for nearly 27 years.
The Servant Girl Annihilator, also known as the Midnight Assassin, was an unidentified American serial killer who preyed upon the city of Austin, Texas, in 1884 and 1885. The sobriquet originated with the writer O. Henry. The series of eight axe murders were referred to by contemporary sources as the Servant Girl Murders.
Adolfo de Jesús Constanzo was a Cuban-American serial killer, drug dealer and cult leader who led an infamous drug-trafficking and occult gang in Matamoros, Tamaulipas, Mexico, that was dubbed the Narcosatanists by the media. His cult members nicknamed him The Godfather. Constanzo led the cult with Sara Aldrete, whom followers nicknamed "The Godmother". The cult was involved in multiple ritualistic killings in Matamoros, including the murder of Mark Kilroy, an American student abducted, tortured and killed in the area in 1989.
Keith Hunter Jesperson is a Canadian-American serial killer who murdered at least eight women in the United States during the early 1990s. He was known as the Happy Face Killer because he drew smiley faces on his many letters to the media and authorities. Many of Jesperson's victims were sex workers and transients who had no connection to him. Strangulation was his preferred method of murdering, the same method he often used to kill animals as a child.
A copycat crime is a criminal act that is modeled after or inspired by a previous crime. It notably occurs after exposure to media content depicting said crimes, and/or a live criminal model.
The Monster of Florence is the name commonly used by the Italian media for a non-definitively identified serial killer active within the Metropolitan City of Florence between 1968 and 1985. The Monster murdered sixteen victims, usually young couples secluded in search of intimacy, in wooded areas during new moons. Several connected persons have been convicted for involvement in the murders, yet the exact sequence of events, the identity of the main actor and the motives remain unclear.
Edward Wayne Edwards was an American serial killer and former fugitive. Edwards escaped from jail in Akron, Ohio, in 1955 and fled across the country, holding up gas stations. By 1961, he was on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list.
The Santa Rosa hitchhiker murders were a series of at least seven unsolved homicides involving female hitchhikers that took place in and around Santa Rosa in Sonoma County in the North Bay area of California in 1972 and 1973. All of the victims were found nude in rural areas near steep embankments or in creek beds near roads. Californian police believe that the perpetrator(s) of the Santa Rosa murders "interviewed" potential victims before killing them. Despite extensive investigations, they remain unidentified.
George Hill Hodel Jr. was an American physician, and a suspect in the murder of Elizabeth Short, the Black Dahlia. He was never formally charged with the crime but, at the time, police considered him a viable suspect, and two of his children believe he was guilty. He was also accused of raping his daughter, Tamar Hodel, but was acquitted of that crime. He lived overseas several times, primarily in the Philippines between 1950 and 1990.
Nightmare Next Door is a true crime documentary series which aired on Investigation Discovery from 2011 to 2016.
In the Dark is an investigative journalism podcast hosted by Madeleine Baran, and produced by Samara Freemark, The New Yorker, and Condé Nast Entertainment. The series launched in September 2016 at American Public Media (APM), featuring in-depth reportage from APM's investigative reporting and documentary unit, APM Reports. Two full seasons were produced, each focusing on a high-profile case and the actions and conduct in the policing or prosecuting of those cases—the kidnapping/murder of Jacob Wetterling and the quadruple homicide case for which Curtis Flowers was tried 6 times. A subsequent "Special Report" series, released in spring 2020, reported on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in the Mississippi Delta. The series was cancelled in May 2022 as part of APM's dissolving of APM Reports and "incorporating select programming elements" from the unit into its MPR News operation.
Slow Burn is a narrative podcast produced by Slate Plus, a division of Slate. The first two seasons of the podcast are hosted by Leon Neyfakh; the third and sixth seasons of the show are hosted by Joel D. Anderson; and the fourth and fifth seasons are hosted by Josh Levin and Noreen Malone, respectively.
Payne Lindsey is an American director, documentary filmmaker, Right Side of the Tree lead singer and podcast host. He is best known for co-creating and hosting the hit investigative journalist and true crime podcasts Up and Vanished and Atlanta Monster.
Up and Vanished is an investigative documentary-style podcast hosted by Payne Lindsey. The series investigates missing persons cold cases by reviewing old leads, interviewing witnesses and townspeople, and on-site investigation. The show is produced by Tenderfoot TV. The first season premiered on August 7, 2016, and investigated the case of Tara Grinstead, a beauty queen and school teacher who disappeared in Ocilla, Georgia. Season 2 aired in August 2018 and focused on the disappearance of Kristal Reisinger in Crestone, Colorado. The podcast also prompted a television special on Oxygen that premiered on November 18, 2018. The success of Up and Vanished has led to the creation of many other podcasts from Payne Lindsey, such as Atlanta Monster and Radio Rental.
The Evidence of Things Not Seen is a book-length essay by James Baldwin, published in 1985 by Holt, Rinehart and Winston. The book covers the Atlanta murders of 1979–1981, often called the Atlanta child murders, and examines race relations and other social and cultural issues in Atlanta. Baldwin had ventured to Atlanta as a literary reporter on assignment for Playboy magazine, which had previously published many prominent black writers, such as Alex Haley and James Farmer. Walter Lowe, the magazine's first black editor, had proposed this assignment to Baldwin. The book's title draws from Hebrews 11:1.
