The murder of Megan Nicole Kanka occurred in Hamilton Township, Mercer County, New Jersey, United States. Seven-year-old Megan Kanka was raped and murdered by her neighbor, Jesse Timmendequas, after he lured her into his house; Timmendequas had previously been convicted of child molestation. The murder attracted national attention and subsequently led to the introduction of "Megan's Law", which requires law enforcement to disclose details relating to the location of registered sex offenders.
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.
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 eighteen murders and is suspected of having killed up to as many as 44 people.
A sex offender is a person who has committed a sex crime. What constitutes a sex crime differs by culture and legal jurisdiction. The majority of convicted sex offenders have convictions for crimes of a sexual nature; however, some sex offenders have simply violated a law contained in a sexual category. Some of the serious crimes which usually result in a mandatory sex-offender classification are sexual assault, statutory rape, bestiality, child sexual abuse, incest, rape, and sexual imposition.
Douglas Franklin Wright was an American serial killer who murdered at least seven people between 1969 and 1991. He was sentenced to death for three of these murders and was executed in 1996 at the Oregon State Penitentiary, becoming the first person to be executed in Oregon since 1962. He was also the first person executed in Oregon by lethal injection.
Dante Wyndham Arthurs is an Australian murderer, convicted of the murder of eight-year-old Sofia Rodriguez-Urrutia Shu.
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.
The Ripper Crew or the Chicago Rippers was an organised 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 disappearances 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."
The murder of Alexandra Nicole "Ally" Zapp occurred in the women's room of a Burger King rest stop in Bridgewater, Massachusetts on July 18, 2002. Section 121 of the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act (P.L. 109-248) is named the "Megan Nicole Kanka and Alexandra Nicole Zapp Community Notification Program" after her and another victim. Massachusetts' Sexually Dangerous Persons Law is informally called the "Ally Zapp" Law.
Donald Leroy Evans was an American serial killer who murdered at least three people from 1985 to 1991. He was known for confessing to killing victims at parks and rest areas across more than twenty U.S. states.
John Albert Gardner III is an American convicted double murderer, rapist, and child molester. He confessed to the February 2009 rape and murder of 14-year-old Amber Dubois from Escondido, California, and the February 2010 rape and murder of 17-year-old Chelsea King from Poway, California, after he entered a plea agreement that spared him from execution. Additionally, Gardner attempted to rape 22-year-old Candice Moncayo of San Diego County, and had been previously incarcerated for the molestation of a 13-year-old girl.
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.
Bobby Jack Fowler was an American rapist and suspected murderer who was active in the United States and Canada from 1973 to 1995. He died in prison of lung cancer during a 16-year sentence following a conviction for rape, kidnapping and attempted rape in Newport, Oregon, in 1996.
The Two Rivers Correctional Institution is a state prison for men located in Umatilla, Umatilla County, Oregon on the Columbia River, owned and operated by the Oregon Department of Corrections.
Scott William Cox is a suspected American serial killer, convicted on two separate counts of homicide in 1993 in Portland, Oregon, and suspected of many more. He was sentenced to 25 years in prison, but was granted parole in 2013, five years early. He currently is serving a post-prison supervision term of life. He is also the prime suspect in 20 unsolved murder cases throughout the United States and Canada, although charges were never brought against him.
Erich Hauert is a Swiss serial killer and sex offender. He was sentenced to life imprisonment for three murders, and his case had a significant impact on the treatment of dangerous sexual offenders and their legal provisions in Switzerland.
Gerald "Jerry" Walter McFadden, known as The Animal, was an American serial killer and sex offender who was executed in 1999.
Rodney Lynn Halbower is an American murderer and suspected serial killer. He is the prime suspect in the Gypsy Hill killings, a series of murders of young women in San Mateo County, California, whose killer was named The San Mateo Slasher. In March 2014, based on DNA profiling, Halbower was named as a person of interest in the murders. By this time, Cathy Woods, a mental patient who was convicted for one of the victims' murders, was exonerated after 35 years behind bars. At the time of his identification, Halbower himself was imprisoned for 38 years in Oregon.
Larry Lee Ranes and Danny Arthur Ranes are American serial killer brothers who committed their crime sprees predominantly in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Larry, a suspect in the murders of five people in the 1960s, has been sentenced to life imprisonment for one murder in 1964; Danny was convicted of four sexually-motivated murders between March and August 1972 with accomplice Brent Eugene Koster, for which both were sentenced to life imprisonment. Their case is notable for the fact that, unlike other siblings who engage in crime, they operated completely independently of one another.
Nicholas Lee Wiley, known as The Syracuse Serial Killer, is an American serial killer and sex offender who murdered at least three women in Syracuse, New York in 2004. He claimed to have killed a total of seven people, although his claims were never corroborated. For his known crimes, he was sentenced to life imprisonment without parole.
