John Allen Muhammad was an American convicted murderer who, along with his partner and accomplice Lee Boyd Malvo, carried out the D.C. sniper attacks of October 2002, killing ten people. Muhammad and Malvo were arrested in connection with the attacks on October 24, 2002, following tips from alert citizens. Although the actions of the two individuals were classified by the media as psychopathy attributable to serial killer characteristics, whether or not their psychopathy meets this classification or as a spree killer is debated by researchers.
San Quentin State Prison (SQ) is a California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation state prison for men, located north of San Francisco in the unincorporated place of San Quentin in Marin County.
William George Bonin, also known as the Freeway Killer or the Freeway Strangler, was an American serial killer and twice-paroled sex offender who committed the rape, torture and murder of a minimum of twenty-one young men and boys between May 1979 to June 1980. On at least twelve occasions, Bonin was assisted by one of his four known accomplices; he is also suspected of committing a further fifteen murders.
The Onion Field is a 1973 nonfiction book by Joseph Wambaugh, a sergeant for the Los Angeles Police Department, chronicling the kidnapping of two plainclothes LAPD officers by a pair of criminals during a traffic stop and the subsequent murder of one of the officers.
Cary Anthony Stayner, also known as the Yosemite Park Killer, or simply the Yosemite Killer, is an American serial killer and the older brother of kidnapping victim Steven Stayner. He was convicted of the murders of four women between February and July 1999. The murders occurred in Mariposa County, California, near Yosemite National Park. Stayner was sentenced to death for the four murders, and is still on death row at San Quentin State Prison in California.
Donald Henry "Pee Wee" Gaskins Jr. was an American serial killer and rapist from South Carolina who stabbed, shot, drowned, and poisoned more than a dozen people. Before his convictions for murder, Gaskins had a long history of criminal activities resulting in prison sentences for assault, burglary, and statutory rape. His last arrest was for contributing to the delinquency of a minor, 13-year-old Kim Ghelkins, who had gone missing in September 1975. During their search for the missing girl, police discovered eight bodies buried in shallow graves near Gaskins's home in Prospect, South Carolina.
The Wendy's massacre was a mass murder that took place in a Wendy's fast-food restaurant at 40-12 Main Street in Flushing, Queens, New York City, New York, on May 24, 2000. Seven employees were shot in the head and five of them died. The killings were committed by former Wendy's employee John Taylor along with Craig Godineaux, who had planned to rob the restaurant's safe. Taylor was subsequently sentenced to death, while Godineaux was sentenced to life in prison. After the shooting, the Wendy’s location was closed and boarded up until it was eventually re-opened as a shopping center.
David Edwin Mason was an American serial killer who killed at least four elderly people between March and December 1980 in Oakland, California, his cellmate in 1982 and possibly his male lover. For these crimes, he was sentenced to death and executed at San Quentin State Prison's gas chamber in 1993, the last inmate to have been executed in this manner in the state. He was also the first condemned inmate since the reinstatement of the death penalty to voluntarily withdraw all of his appeals.
Four police officers in Oakland, California, were fatally shot on March 21, 2009, by Lovelle Mixon, a convicted felon wanted on a no-bail warrant for a parole violation. Mixon shot and killed two police officers of the Oakland Police Department during a routine traffic stop. After escaping on foot to the nearby apartment of his sister, Mixon shot and killed two police SWAT team officers attempting to apprehend him. Mixon was killed as other officers on the team returned fire.
Douglas Daniel Clark was an American serial killer and necrophile. Clark and his accomplice, Carol Mary Bundy, were collectively known as the Sunset Strip Killers and were responsible for the deaths of at least seven individuals although they are considered suspects in the deaths of several other women and young girls. Clark was charged with six murders in Los Angeles, California and was convicted in 1983. Clark's victims were typically young prostitutes or teenage runaways and his victims were decapitated and their severed heads kept as mementos. He would also perform sex acts on their corpses.
Marshall "Eddie" Conway was an American black nationalist who was a leading member of the Baltimore chapter of the Black Panther Party. He was convicted in 1971 for the murder of a police officer a year earlier in a trial with many irregularities. In 2014 he was released on parole after an appellate court ruled that his jury had been given improper instructions.
Nikko Allen Jenkins is an American spree killer convicted of committing four murders in Omaha, Nebraska, in August 2013. The murders occurred within a month after he had been released from prison after serving 10-and-a-half years of the 18 years to which he had been sentenced for a carjacking committed at age 15 and for assaults committed in prison. Jenkins stated that he had committed the killings at the command of the ancient serpent god Apophis. He was found competent to stand trial, found guilty of the four murders, and was sentenced to death in May 2017.
Your Black Muslim Bakery (YBMB) was an American chain of bakeries opened by Yusuf Bey in 1968 in Santa Barbara, California, and relocated to Oakland in 1971. A power broker at the center of a local community, YBMB was held out as a model of African American economic self-sufficiency. However, it was later linked to widespread physical and sexual abuse, welfare fraud, and murder.
On the night of September 6, 2018, 26-year-old accountant Botham Jean was murdered in Dallas, Texas by off-duty Dallas Police Department patrol officer Amber Guyger, who entered Jean's apartment and fatally shot him. Guyger, who said that she had entered Jean's apartment believing it was her own and believed Jean to be a burglar, was initially charged with manslaughter. The absence of a murder charge led to protests and accusations of racial bias because Jean—an unarmed black man—was killed in his own home by a white off-duty officer who had apparently disregarded police protocols. On November 30, 2018, Guyger was indicted on a charge of murder. On October 1, 2019, she was found guilty of murder, and was sentenced to ten years' imprisonment the following day. The ruling was upheld on appeal in 2021.
In late May and early June 2020, two ambush-style attacks occurred against security personnel and law enforcement officers in California. The attacks left two dead and injured three others.
David Esco Welch is an American mass murderer who shot and killed six people during a home invasion of his girlfriend's house in Oakland, California on December 8, 1986.
Mervin Ray Hughes, known as The Serial Shooter, is an American serial killer who shot and killed one man in 1986 and later shot and killed two more people during a January 1999 shooting spree in Oakland, which also injured ten others. He is also suspected of killing a fourth person in 1992, though charges in that case were dropped. Hughes was sentenced to death in 2005 and remains on death row.
Mark William Cunningham is an American serial killer and arsonist who shot and killed three men at random in Santa Cruz, California, from April through June 1983. The murders were not linked together until months later, when forensic evidence concluded that the victims had been shot with the same gun. Cunningham was arrested the following year, was tried, convicted, and sentenced to life in prison in 1988.
The Stockton serial shootings are a series of fatal shootings that occurred in Stockton and Oakland, California between April 2021 and September 2022. The shootings have been linked together by ballistic tests, but police have not revealed if the same gun was used in every shooting. They also do not know how many people are involved with the shootings. On October 15, 2022, a Stockton man, Wesley Brownlee, was arrested in connection to the shootings. On December 27, Brownlee was charged with an additional five charges.
Alexander Hernandez is an American serial killer who murdered five people during a series of drive-by shootings in the Los Angeles Metropolitan area of California between March and August 2014. He targeted random people and dogs, murdering five people, injuring 11 others, and killing two dogs. He was later convicted of the crimes and sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.
