A thrill killing is premeditated or random murder that is motivated by the sheer excitement of the act. While there have been attempts to categorize multiple murders, such as identifying "thrill killing" as a type of "hedonistic mass killing", actual details of events frequently overlap category definitions making attempts at such distinctions problematic.
Donald Jay Beardslee was an American serial killer who murdered three women. While on parole for killing a woman in Missouri in 1969, Beardslee murdered two more women in California. He was sentenced to death and executed by lethal injection in San Quentin State Prison in 2005.
The Claremont serial killings is the name given by the media to a case involving the disappearance of an Australian woman, aged 18, and the killings of two others, aged 23 and 27, in 1996–1997. After attending night spots in Claremont, a wealthy western suburb of Perth, Western Australia, all three women disappeared in similar circumstances leading police to suspect that an unidentified serial killer was the offender. The case was described as the state's biggest, longest running, and most expensive investigation.
The Riverbend Maximum Security Institution (RMSI) is a prison in Nashville, Tennessee, operated by the Tennessee Department of Correction. The prison opened in 1989 and replaced its 100-year-old neighbor, the Tennessee State Penitentiary. RMSI, which is made up by 20 different buildings, sits on 132 acres (0.53 km2) located off Cockrill Bend Boulevard in Nashville. Riverbend's designated capacity is 714 offenders. Of that number, 480 are classified as high risk.
Mule Creek State Prison (MCSP) is a California State Prison for men. It was opened in June 1987, and covers 866 acres (350 ha) located in Ione, California. The prison has a staff of 1,242 and an annual operating budget of $157 million.
Robert Tyrone Hayes is an American serial killer who has been convicted of three murders in the Daytona Beach, Florida, area between December 2005 and February 2006. DNA tests have also linked him to a fourth murder committed in March 2016. In addition, he remains the prime suspect in the murder of another woman in December 2007.
The Ripper Crew or the Chicago Rippers was an organized crime group of serial killers, cannibals, rapists, and necrophiles. The group composed of Robin Gecht and three associates: Edward Spreitzer, and brothers Andrew and Thomas Kokoraleis. They were suspected in the murders of 17 women in Illinois in 1981 and 1982, as well as the unrelated fatal shooting of a man in a random drive-by shooting. According to one of the detectives who investigated the case, Gecht "made Manson look like a Boy Scout."
Terry Anthony Blair was an American serial killer who was convicted of killing seven women of various ages in Kansas City, Missouri, although investigators believed that there were additional unidentified victims.
Harvey Louis Carignan was an American serial killer who was sentenced to life in prison for the murders of two women in the early 1970s. He had been previously convicted of a 1949 rape and murder he committed while stationed in the U.S. Army, in Anchorage, Alaska. He was imprisoned at the Minnesota Correctional Facility – Faribault until his death in 2023.
Michael Wayne McGray is a Canadian serial killer convicted of killing seven individuals between 1985 and 1998. He claims to have killed eleven others during the same time period.
Anthony Kirkland is an American serial killer. Between 2006 and 2009, Kirkland murdered two women and two girls in the Cincinnati area, following a 16-year prison term for the 1987 killing of his girlfriend.
Anthony Cook and Nathaniel Cook are American brothers and serial killers who committed at least nine rape-murders between 1973 and 1981. They were active in Toledo, Ohio, and surrounding areas with most of their victims being young couples. Anthony was arrested and convicted for the final murder, but his and Nathaniel's guilt in the other killings would not be uncovered until Nathaniel was detained for a misdemeanor in 1998, after which DNA profiling exposed their involvement. Both brothers were later convicted and sentenced to long terms of imprisonment; Anthony received multiple life sentences, while Nathaniel was sentenced to 75 years with a minimum of fifteen years served, and he was paroled after eighteen years in 2018.
Donna R. Perry is an American serial killer. Born male, she was charged with three counts of first-degree murder in 2014 for killing three women in 1990. Perry underwent gender-affirming surgery in 2000; her gender identity formed a portion of the defense's argument.
Keith Gibson is an American serial killer who murdered between two and six people in Delaware and Pennsylvania from January to June 2021, less than a month after being paroled from serving time for a manslaughter conviction dating back to 2008.
