A serial killer is typically a person who murders three or more persons, 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.
Gary Leon Ridgway is an American serial killer known as the Green River Killer. He was initially convicted of 48 separate murders committed between the early 1980s and late 1990s. 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.
Randy Steven Kraft is an American serial killer and rapist known as the Scorecard Killer, the Southern California Strangler, and the Freeway Killer, who committed the rape, torture, and murder of a minimum of sixteen young men between 1972 and 1983, the majority of whom he killed in California. Kraft is also believed to have committed the rape and murder of up to fifty-one other young men and boys. He was convicted in May 1989 and is currently incarcerated on death row at San Quentin State Prison in Marin County, California.
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. Bonin became known as the "Freeway Killer" due to the fact that the majority of his victims' bodies were discovered alongside numerous freeways in southern California.
Queen's Park is a park situated on the south side of the city of Glasgow, Scotland, between Strathbungo, Shawlands, Battlefield, Mount Florida, and Crosshill The 60-hectare (148-acre) park lies about 2+1⁄2 miles (4 km) south of the city centre, and gives its name to a nearby railway station and several other local businesses and institutions, including the football team Queen's Park F.C.
Patrick Wayne Kearney, also known as The Trash Bag Killer and The Freeway Killer, is an American serial killer and necrophile who murdered a minimum of twenty-one young men and boys throughout southern California between 1962 and 1977.
Heriberto Seda, often referred to as The New York Zodiac or The Brooklyn Sniper, is an American serial killer who was active in New York City from 1990 through 1993. He fatally shot three people and wounded six others before being caught on June 18, 1996.
David Richard Berkowitz, also known as the Son of Sam and the .44 Caliber Killer, is an American serial killer who pled guilty to eight shootings that began in New York City on July 29, 1976. Berkowitz grew up in New York City and served in the United States Army. Using a .44 Special caliber Bulldog revolver, he killed six people and wounded seven others by July 1977, terrorizing New Yorkers. Berkowitz eluded the biggest police manhunt in the city's history while leaving letters that mocked the police and promised further crimes, which were highly publicized by the press.
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.
John Patrick St. John, better known as "Jigsaw John", was an American police officer and Los Angeles Police Department homicide detective, renowned for his investigations of many of Los Angeles's highest-profile murder cases. Upon his retirement in 1993, St. John held the highest seniority on the LAPD with 51 years of service, a distinction that earned him the privilege of carrying LAPD Detective badge No. 1.
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.
Michael Hubert Hughes is a convicted American serial killer on death row in San Quentin. Hughes was initially sentenced to life without parole for the murders of four women and girls in California. Later, he was convicted of committing three further murders of women, linked to the crimes via DNA profiling. At the second trial, he was sentenced to the death penalty.
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.
The Dnepropetrovsk maniacs are Ukrainian serial killers responsible for a string of murders in Dnepropetrovsk (Dnipropetrovsk) in June and July 2007. The case gained additional notoriety because the killers made video recordings of some of the murders, with one of the videos leaking to the Internet. Two 19‑year-olds, Viktor Sayenko, born 1 March 1988, and Igor Suprunyuk, born 20 April 1988, were arrested and charged with 21 murders.
The Freeway Phantom is the pseudonym of an unidentified serial killer who murdered five girls and a woman in Washington, D.C., between April 1971 and September 1972.
The Southside Slayer was a collective epithet used by the media and police to what was initially believed to be a single serial killer who killed upwards of a hundred predominantly black prostitutes in the Los Angeles area from the 1980s to the 1990s. It later turned out that the killings were committed by several different, unrelated murderers who coincidentally operated in the same area and timeframe.
Ennis William Cosby, the only son of American comedian Bill Cosby, was murdered on January 16, 1997, near Interstate 405 in Los Angeles, California. He was shot in the head by 18-year-old Mikhail Markhasev in a failed robbery attempt. Cosby was 27 years old.
Mikhail Viktorovich Popkov is a Russian serial killer, rapist, and necrophile who committed the sexual assault and murder of seventy-eight girls and women between 1992 and 2010 in Angarsk, Irkutsk, in Siberia, and Vladivostok in Far East, although he has confessed to and is suspected of at least eighty-three in total. He is known as "The Werewolf" and the "Angarsk Maniac" for the particularly brutal nature of his crimes; he would extensively mutilate the bodies of his victims and perform sexual acts on them. He is the most prolific serial killer in Russian history.
Ivan Jerome Hill, also known by his nickname The 60 Freeway Killer, is an American serial killer who raped and murdered at least eight women in Los Angeles between 1986 and 1994. Hill dumped his victims' corpses along the East-West Highway, known as "California State Route 60", contributing to his nickname. Hill was captured based on DNA profiling nearly a decade after his last murder and was sentenced to death in 2007.
Freeway Killer is a 2010 crime horror thriller film directed by John Murlowski, and written by David Birke. A direct-to-video release, it is based on the crimes of William Bonin, an American serial killer who raped, tortured, and murdered at least twenty-one men and boys in Southern California in 1979 and 1980. It stars Scott Anthony Leet as Bonin, and co-stars Cole Williams, Dusty Sorg, Debbon Ayer, Eileen Dietz, and Michael Rooker.