The D.C. sniper attacks were a series of coordinated shootings that occurred during three weeks in October 2002 throughout the Washington metropolitan area, consisting of the District of Columbia, Maryland, and Virginia, and preliminary shootings, that consisted of murders and robberies in several states, and lasted for six months starting in February 2002. Seven people were killed, and seven others were injured in the preliminary shootings, and ten people were killed and three others were critically wounded in the October shootings. In total, the snipers killed 17 people and wounded 10 others in a 10-month span.
The Zodiac Killer is the pseudonym of an unidentified serial killer who operated in Northern California in the late 1960s. The Zodiac murdered five known victims in the San Francisco Bay Area between December 1968 and October 1969, operating in rural, urban, and suburban settings. He targeted three young couples and a lone male cab driver. 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.
Randall Brent Woodfield is an American serial killer, serial rapist, kidnapper, robber, burglar and former football player who was dubbed the I-5 Killer or the I-5 Bandit by the media due to the crimes he committed along the Interstate 5 corridor running through Washington, Oregon and California. Before his capture, Woodfield was suspected of multiple sexual assaults and murders. Though convicted in only one murder, he has been linked to a total of 18 murders and is suspected of having killed up to as many as 44 people.
The 1991 Austin yogurt shop killings are an unsolved quadruple homicide which took place at an I Can't Believe It's Yogurt! shop in Austin, Texas, United States on Friday, December 6, 1991. The victims were four teenage girls: 13-year-old Amy Ayers, 17-year-old Eliza Thomas, 17-year-old Jennifer Harbison, and Jennifer's 15-year-old sister Sarah. Jennifer and Eliza were the shop employees, while Sarah and her friend Amy were in the shop to get a ride home with Jennifer after it closed at 11:00 pm. Approximately one hour before closing time, a man who had tried to hustle customers in his queue was permitted to use the toilet in the back, which took a very long time and may have jammed a rear door open. A couple who left the shop just before 11:00 pm, when Jennifer locked the front door to prevent more customers from entering, reported seeing two men at a table acting furtively.
Town Center at Boca Raton, often referred to as Boca Town Center, Town Center Mall, or simply Town Center, is an upscale shopping mall located in Boca Raton, Florida, that has been owned and operated by Simon Property Group since 1998. The mall features Macy's, Nordstrom, Bloomingdale's, Neiman Marcus, and Saks Fifth Avenue.
The Texarkana Moonlight Murders, a term coined by the contemporary press, was a series of four unsolved serial murders and related violent crimes committed in the Texarkana region of the United States in early 1946. They were attributed to an alleged unidentified perpetrator known as the Phantom of Texarkana, the Phantom Killer, or the Phantom Slayer. This hypothetical suspect is credited with attacking eight people, five of them fatally, in a ten-week period.
Christopher Bernard Wilder, also known as the Beauty Queen Killer and the Snapshot Killer, was an Australian-American serial killer who abducted at least twelve young women and girls, killing eight of them during a six-week, cross-country crime spree in the United States in early 1984. Wilder's series of murders began in Florida on February 26, 1984, and continued across the country through Texas, Oklahoma, Colorado, Nevada and California, with attempted abductions in Washington and New York. Wilder victimized attractive young women, most of whom he would entice by promising to take their pictures. After subduing them, he would torture and rape them before shooting, stabbing with a knife, or strangling them to death. Two or more of his victims were electrocuted using a makeshift electrical cord.
The Burger Chef murders took place at a Burger Chef restaurant in Speedway, Indiana, United States, on the night of Friday, November 17, 1978. Four young employees went missing in what was initially thought to be a petty theft of cash from the restaurant's safe. By Saturday morning it became a clear case of robbery-kidnapping, and by Sunday, when their bodies were discovered, a case of murder. While investigators believe they have identified some or all of the perpetrators, without physical evidence they have not been able to prosecute those who remain alive.
The 1978 Blackfriars Massacre, also known as the Blackfriars murders, is an unsolved Irish Mob and/or Italian-American Mafia massacre that occurred on 28 June 1978, in the Blackfriars Pub in Downtown Boston, Massachusetts. Four criminals known to the police and a former Channel 7 Boston television investigative news anchorman, Jack Kelly, were killed, allegedly over the sale of cocaine.
Joseph Gerard Christopher was an American serial killer who gained infamy for a series of murders in the early 1980s. He is believed to have killed at least twelve African American men and boys and wounded numerous others.
Patrick Tracy Burris was an American spree killer responsible for at least five known murders in Cherokee County, South Carolina in 2009. Over a span of six days, he shot and killed five people. His final known victim died of her injuries in the hospital on July 4, 2009. On July 6, 2009, police shot and killed Burris during a shootout in Dallas, North Carolina. His gun was matched by ballistics tests to the bullets used in the murders.
On February 26, 2015, a gunman shot and killed seven people in several locations across the town of Tyrone, an unincorporated community approximately 95 miles east of Springfield, Missouri, United States. The gunman, identified as 36-year-old Joseph Jesse Aldridge, was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound the next day. It was the worst mass murder in the history of Texas County, which previously had experienced an average of one homicide per year. It is also the deadliest mass shooting in Missouri.
In May and June 2018, a spree killer sought out and fatally shot six people in Scottsdale, Arizona, United States. The shooting spree began on May 30 and ended June 4, when the shooter killed himself as police closed in. The shooter was identified as 56-year-old Dwight Lamon Jones.
Charles Thurman Sinclair, also known as the Coin Shop Killer, was an American criminal suspected of various murders of coin shop owners between the early 1980s and the 1990s. He was categorized as a nomadic killer who was linked to murders across the western United States and Canada.
Gary James Lewingdon and Thaddeus Charles Lewingdon were American siblings and serial killers, who committed a series of ten murders in different Ohio counties from December 1977 to December 1978 for the motive of robbery. As a murder weapon, the criminals used .22 caliber pistols, due to which they received the nickname The .22 Caliber Killers. In 1979, both brothers were sentenced to several terms of life imprisonment.
Alexander Mengel, also known as the Scalp Collector, was a Guyanese-born tool and die maker, security guard, fugitive, murderer and suspected serial killer who committed at least two murders during a week-long, cross-country crime spree in the United States and Canada in early-1985. While returning home from the Catskill Mountains on February 24, 1985, Mengel allegedly killed a patrol officer and fled on foot in Westchester County, New York.
Jeffrey Lynn Hand was an American murderer, kidnapper and suspected serial killer linked to two known murders committed in Indiana from 1972 to 1973. Deemed mentally unfit to stand trial for the latter, he was released and later killed following a botched kidnapping attempt in 1978. He was posthumously linked to the 1972 murder via DNA profiling, and authorities are currently investigating his possible involvement in other cases.
Larry Allen Hayes was an American spree killer who was executed in Texas for the murders of two women in Montgomery County. On July 15, 1999, Hayes shot and killed his wife, 46-year-old Mary Hayes, at their Woodloch home, then drove to a nearby convenience store and fatally shot the clerk, 18-year-old Rosalyn Robinson. Hayes was convicted of capital murder, waived all appeals, and was executed via lethal injection in 2003. His execution drew attention as it was noted by the Associated Press that he was the first white person to be executed in Texas for killing a black person.
