A serial killer is typically a person who murders three or more people, with the murders taking place over more than a month and including a significant period of time between them. While most authorities set a threshold of three murders, others extend it to four or lessen it to two.
Dr. Hannibal Lecter is a character created by the American novelist Thomas Harris. Lecter is a serial killer who eats his victims. Before his capture, he was a respected forensic psychiatrist; after his incarceration, he is consulted by FBI agents Will Graham and Clarice Starling to help them find other serial killers.
Dennis Lynn Rader, also known as BTK, is an American serial killer who murdered at least ten people in Wichita and Park City, Kansas, between 1974 and 1991. Although Rader occasionally killed or attempted to kill men and children, he typically targeted women. His victims were often bound, sometimes with objects from their homes, and either suffocated with a plastic bag or manually strangled with a ligature.
Westley Allan Dodd was an American convicted serial killer and sex offender. In 1989, he sexually assaulted and murdered three young boys in Vancouver, Washington. He was arrested later that year after a failed attempt to abduct a six-year-old boy at a movie theatre.
Rhoda Penmark is a fictional character in William March's 1954 novel The Bad Seed and the stage play of the same name adapted from it by Maxwell Anderson. She is both the protagonist and antagonist of the story. Penmark is a child serial killer and psychopath who manipulates those around her. She was portrayed by Patty McCormack in the original rendition of the play and later in the 1956 film adaptation. She was also portrayed by Carrie Wells in the 1985 made-for-television adaptation. In the 2018 adaptation and its sequel, she is known as Emma Grossman and portrayed by Mckenna Grace.
Tommy Lynn Sells was an American serial killer. Though only convicted of one murder, for which he received the death penalty and was eventually executed, authorities believe he committed a total of 22 murders. Sells himself claimed on various occasions to have murdered over 70 people.
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 his victims were sex workers and transients who had no connection to him. Strangulation was Jesperson's preferred method of murdering, the same method he often used to kill animals as a child.
Killer on the Road is a crime novel by American author James Ellroy. First published in 1986, it is a non-series book between the Lloyd Hopkins Trilogy and the L.A. Quartet. It was first released by Avon as a mass-market paperback original under the title Silent Terror, and has since been republished in the U.S. under Ellroy's original title Killer on the Road, first as a mass-market paperback in 1990 and later as a trade paperback in 1999.
An angel of mercy or angel of death is a type of criminal offender who is usually employed as a medical practitioner or a caregiver and intentionally harms or kills people under their care. The angel of mercy is often in a position of power and may decide the victim would be better off if they no longer suffered from whatever severe illness is plaguing them. This person then uses their knowledge to kill the victim. In some cases, as time goes on, this behavior escalates to encompass the healthy and the easily treated.
Dr Anthony ‘Tony’ Valentine Hill is a fictional character created by Scottish crime writer Val McDermid. He is portrayed by actor Robson Green in the ITV television series Wire in the Blood based on her Tony Hill and Carol Jordan series of novels.
The World's End Murders is the colloquial name given to the murder of two girls, Christine Eadie, 17, and Helen Scott, 17, in Edinburgh, in October 1977. The case is so named because both victims were last seen alive leaving The World's End pub in Edinburgh's Old Town. The only person to stand trial accused of the murders, Angus Sinclair, was acquitted in 2007 in controversial circumstances. Following the amendment of the law of double jeopardy, which would have prevented his retrial, Sinclair was retried in October 2014 and convicted of both murders on 14 November 2014. He was sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 37 years, the longest sentence by a Scottish court, meaning he would have been 106 years old when he was eligible for a potential release on parole. He died at HM Prison Glenochil aged 73 on 11 March 2019. Coincidentally, he died on the same day the BBC's Crimewatch Roadshow programme profiled the murders.
Fictional portrayals of psychopaths, or sociopaths, are some of the most notorious in film and literature but may only vaguely or partly relate to the concept of psychopathy, which is itself used with varying definitions by mental health professionals, criminologists and others. The character may be identified as a diagnosed/assessed psychopath or sociopath within the fictional work itself, or by its creator when discussing their intentions with the work, which might be distinguished from opinions of audiences or critics based only on a character appearing to show traits or behaviors associated with an undefined popular stereotype of psychopathy.
The Last Temptation (2002) is a crime novel by Scottish author Val McDermid, the third in her acclaimed Dr. Tony Hill series, which has been adapted into the ITV television drama Wire in the Blood, starring Robson Green. This particular novel served loosely as the basis for recent episode Falls the Shadow.
Singing in the Shrouds is a detective novel by New Zealand writer Ngaio Marsh; it is the twentieth novel to feature Roderick Alleyn, and was first published in 1959. The plot concerns a serial killer who is on a voyage from London to South Africa.
Internet homicide refers to killing in which victim and perpetrator met online, in some cases having known each other previously only through the Internet. Also Internet killer is an appellation found in media reports for a person who broadcasts the crime of murder online or who murders a victim met through the Internet. Depending on the venue used, other terms used in the media are Internet chat room killer, Craigslist killer, Facebook serial killer. Internet homicide can also be part of an Internet suicide pact or consensual homicide. Some commentators believe that reports on these homicides have overemphasized their connection to the Internet.
Peter Britton Tobin was a Scottish convicted serial killer and sex offender who served a whole life order at HM Prison Edinburgh for three murders committed between 1991 and 2006. Police also investigated Tobin over the deaths and disappearances of other young women and girls.
David Groves, better known by his birth name Patrick David Mackay, is a British serial killer who is believed to be one of the United Kingdom's most prolific serial murderers.
The Peterborough ditch murders were a series of murders which took place in Cambridgeshire, England, in March 2013. All three victims were male and died from stab wounds. Their bodies were discovered dumped in ditches outside Peterborough. In Hereford, two other men were stabbed but survived. The perpetrator was Joanna Christine Dennehy, a Cambridgeshire woman, who was later sentenced to life imprisonment with a whole life order.
Will Graham is a fictional character and protagonist of Thomas Harris' 1981 novel Red Dragon. Graham is also the protagonist of two film adaptations of the novel, Manhunter (1986) and Red Dragon (2002), and the television series Hannibal (2013–2015), which adapted various parts of the Hannibal Lecter franchise.
The murder of Elizabeth McCabe was the infamous murder of a 20-year-old woman in Dundee, Scotland in February 1980. The case is one of Scotland's most notorious unsolved murders, and led to one of Scotland's largest manhunts. McCabe had disappeared after a night out at Teazer's Disco in Dundee city centre, and was found strangled to death two weeks later in Templeton Woods on the outskirts of the city. This was only 11 months after another woman, 18-year-old prostitute Carol Lannen, had been found dead only 150 yards away in the same woods, leading to the killings being labelled the Templeton Woods murders in the press and causing many to fear that there was a serial killer at large in the city at the time, although police have not linked the murders.
