Gary Leon Ridgway, also known as the Green River Killer, is an American serial killer and sex offender. He was initially convicted of 48 separate murders. As part of his plea bargain, another conviction was added, bringing the total number of convictions to 49, making him the second most prolific serial killer in United States history according to confirmed murders. He killed many teenage girls and women in the U.S. state of Washington during the 1980s and 1990s.
Doris Elizabeth Angleton was an American socialite and murder victim. Her husband, Robert Angleton, had been accused of planning the crime. His brother, Roger Nicholas Angleton, was arrested in possession of a contract for a murder in exchange for $100,000 per year for ten years, in addition to cassettes containing audio recordings purportedly of conversations between himself and Robert planning the murder of a woman named Doris in exchange for money. Roger killed himself in custody, after writing a suicide note in which he admitted to killing his sister-in-law and claimed his brother had no involvement.
Darlie Lynn Peck Routier is an American woman from Rowlett, Texas, who was convicted and sentenced to death for the murder of her five-year-old son Damon in 1996. She has also been charged with capital murder in the death of her six-year-old son, Devon, who was murdered at the same time as Damon. To date, Routier has not been tried for Devon’s murder.
Elizabeth Short, known posthumously as the Black Dahlia, was an American woman found murdered in the Leimert Park neighborhood of Los Angeles on January 15, 1947. Her case became highly publicized owing to the gruesome nature of the crime, which included the mutilation of her corpse, which was bisected at the waist.
Henry Lee Lucas was an American convicted serial killer. Lucas was convicted of murdering his mother in 1960 and two others in 1983. He rose to infamy while incarcerated for these crimes when he falsely confessed to approximately 600 other murders to Texas Rangers and other law enforcement officials. Many unsolved cases were closed based on the confessions and officially attributed the murders to Lucas, and he was considered the most prolific serial killer in history. Lucas was convicted of murdering 11 people and condemned to death for a single case with a then-unidentified victim, later identified as Debra Jackson. An investigation by the Dallas Times-Herald newspaper showed that many of the murders Lucas confessed to were flatly impossible for him to have committed. While the Rangers defended their work, a follow-up investigation by the Attorney General of Texas concluded Lucas was a fabulist who had falsely confessed. Lucas' death sentence was commuted to life in prison in 1998. Lucas himself later recanted everything as a hoax with the exception of his confession to murdering his mother. He died of congestive heart failure in 2001.
Carl Eugene Watts, also known by his nickname Coral, was an American serial killer dubbed "The Sunday Morning Slasher" who murdered numerous women and girls over an 8-year period. He is suspected of being the most prolific serial killer in United States history. He died of prostate cancer while serving two sentences of life imprisonment without parole in a Michigan prison for the murders of Helen Dutcher and Gloria Steele, although the number of his victims may have exceeded 100.
The Servant Girl Annihilator, also known as the Austin Axe Murderer and the Midnight Assassin, was an unidentified American serial killer who preyed upon the city of Austin, Texas, between 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.
William Lester Suff, also known as The Riverside Prostitute Killer and The Lake Elsinore Killer, is an American serial killer.
Marybeth Roe Tinning is an American murderer and suspected serial killer who was convicted in New York State of the murder of her ninth child, 4-month-old daughter Tami Lynne, on December 20, 1985. She is suspected to be similarly involved in the previous deaths of her eight children, all of which took place within the span of fourteen years.
"Autopsy" is a television series of HBO's America Undercover documentary series. Dr. Michael Baden, a real-life forensic pathologist, is the primary analyst, and has been personally involved in many of the cases that are reviewed.
Robert Charles Browne is an American murderer who is currently serving two life sentences for the murders of two teenage girls in Colorado Springs, Colorado, committed in 1987 and 1991, respectively. A few years into his sentence, he sent letters to the El Paso County Sheriff's Office in which he claimed to be a serial killer who has killed approximately 48 or 49 people since 1970 across several states.
Tommy Lynn Sells was an American serial killer. He was convicted of one murder, for which he received the death penalty and was eventually executed. Authorities believe he committed a total of 22 murders.
John McClamrock was a Dallas high school American football player who received media attention and sympathy from many Americans after an accident that left him with near-total paralysis in 1973.
Walter Ned "Skip" Hollandsworth is an American author, journalist, screenwriter, and executive editor for Texas Monthly magazine. In 2010, he won the National Magazine Award for Feature Writing from the American Society of Magazine Editors, for "Still Life", the story of John McClamrock. His true crime history, The Midnight Assassin, about a series of murders attributed to the Servant Girl Annihilator that took place in Austin, Texas, in 1885, was published in April 2016 by Henry Holt and Company.
Sean Vincent Gillis is an American serial killer and sex offender who stalked and murdered eight Louisiana women between 1994 and 2004 in the Baton Rouge Metro and surrounding areas. He was arrested without incident at his residence on Burgin Ave at 1:30 a.m. on April 29, 2004. In his initial arrest, he was charged with three counts of first degree murder and three counts of ritualistic acts in the murders of 29-year-old Katherine Hall, 45-year-old Johnnie Mae Williams and 43-year-old Donna Bennett Johnston. Gillis confessed to the murders with little coercion and then informed investigators about five other women whom he had murdered.
Karol Kot was a Polish murderer who terrorized the city of Kraków between 1964 and 1966. Due to trial evidence and to the seemingly random choices of victims, which included children and elderly people, Kot was nicknamed the Vampire of Kraków. After the trial, in which Kot pleaded guilty to all the crimes he was charged, he was sentenced to death on 14 July 1967. After an appeal initially reduced his sentence to life in prison, his sentence was reinstated. Kot was hanged on 16 May 1968.
Bernhardt Tiede II is an American mortician who was convicted of the November 19, 1996 murder of his companion, wealthy 81-year-old widow Marjorie "Marge" Nugent, in Carthage, Texas. He was 38 at the time of the murder.
Roger Reece Kibbe was an American serial killer and rapist known as the "I-5 Strangler". Kibbe found all but one of his victims on freeways around Sacramento, California. In 1991 he was sentenced to 25 years to life imprisonment for the death of Darcie Frackenpohl.
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 the death penalty. He died of natural causes while awaiting execution in October 2022.
Carla Jan Walker was an American homicide victim abducted from a bowling alley parking lot in Fort Worth, Texas on February 17, 1974. Her body was found three days later in a drainage ditch just 30 minutes south of Fort Worth.
