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.
Cary Anthony Stayner, also known as the Yosemite Park Killer or 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.
On February 18, 1995, 19-year-old American soldier Tracie Joy McBride was kidnapped, raped, and murdered by 44-year-old American soldier Louis Jones Jr. in Texas. Jones abducted McBride from Goodfellow Air Force Base and raped her at his house before bludgeoning her to death under a highway bridge in Coke County. He later sexually assaulted his ex-wife Sandra Lane and was arrested on March 1, and the ensuing police investigation found that he was also responsible for raping and murdering McBride. Jones was tried and convicted in the U.S. federal court system for kidnapping resulting in death; his crime was a federal case because it had begun on a military base and because the rape was the prime aspect to the murder, which made it a capital offense. Following his initial denials, Jones eventually confessed that he had raped McBride in addition to murdering her, and was sentenced to death. He subsequently attempted to contest his sentencing on the grounds that he had been suffering from Gulf War syndrome, but his appeals were rejected. On March 18, 2003, the 53-year-old Jones was executed by lethal injection.
The Mahmudiyah rape and killings were a series of war crimes committed by five U.S. Army soldiers during the U.S. occupation of Iraq, involving the gang-rape and murder of 14-year-old Iraqi girl Abeer Qassim Hamza al-Janabi and the murder of her family on March 12, 2006. It occurred in the family's house to the southwest of Yusufiyah, a village to the west of the town of Al-Mahmudiyah, Iraq. Other members of al-Janabi's family murdered by American soldiers included her 34-year-old mother Fakhriyah Taha Muhasen, 45-year-old father Qassim Hamza Raheem, and 6-year-old sister Hadeel Qassim Hamza al-Janabi. The two remaining survivors of the family, 9-year-old brother Ahmed and 11-year-old brother Mohammed, were at school during the massacre and orphaned by the event.
Richard Francis Cottingham is an American serial killer who was convicted in New York of six murders committed between 1972 and 1980 and convicted in New Jersey of twelve murders committed between 1967 and 1978. He was nicknamed by media as the Torso Killer and the Times Square Ripper, since some of the murders he was convicted of included mutilation.
The Cincinnati Strangler was the name given to an American serial killer responsible for the murder of seven women in Cincinnati, Ohio, between December 1965 and December 9, 1966. During the investigation, a local resident, Posteal Laskey Jr., was declared the main suspect in the killings and was arrested on December 9, 1966, for one of the murders for which he was subsequently convicted. Although he was never charged with the other murders, the media and police blamed him for the other deaths since according to the official version of the investigators, the murders ceased after his arrest.
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.
Banaz Mahmod was a 20-year-old Iraqi Kurdish woman who lived in Mitcham, South London, England. She was murdered on the orders of her family in a so-called honour killing because she ended a violent and abusive forced marriage and started a relationship with someone of her own choosing. Her father, uncle and three cousins were later convicted of her murder.
On the morning of March 5, 2008, Eve Marie Carson was shot and killed in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, United States where she was a student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
John Floyd Thomas Jr. is an American serial killer, serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole for the murders of seven white women in the Los Angeles area during the 1970s and 1980s. Police suspect Thomas committed 10 to 15 more murders.
Rodney James Alcala was an American serial killer and sex offender who was sentenced to death in California for five murders committed between 1977 and 1979, receiving an additional sentence of 25 years to life after pleading guilty to two further homicides committed in New York State in 1971 and 1977. While he has been conclusively linked to eight murders, Alcala's true number of victims remains unknown and could be much higher – authorities believe the actual number is as high as 130.
Zainab Amin Ansari was a seven-year-old Pakistani girl who was abducted in her hometown of Kasur, Punjab while she was on her way to Quran recitation classes on 4 January 2018. Her body was found discarded five days later within a garbage disposal site near the city of Lahore on 9 January 2018; an autopsy report disclosed that she had been extensively raped and tortured before being strangled to death. Her rapist and murderer, 24-year-old Imran Ali, was arrested and identified as a serial killer responsible for at least seven previous rapes and murders of prepubescent girls in the region.
Patrick Tissier is a French serial killer and rapist who was convicted of killing three people from 1971 to 1993 in the southern regions of France. His case, along with that of Christian Van Geloven, led to a reform in the penal code in regard to the treatment of child murderers.
Nikolai Borisovich Fefilov, known as The Urals Strangler, was a Soviet serial killer. Between 1982 and 1988, he killed 7 women and girls in Sverdlovsk, 6 of which were rape-related.
The rape and murder of Angie Dodge occurred in Idaho Falls, Idaho on June 13, 1996. The true perpetrator was apprehended in May 2019, nearly 23 years after the crime was committed.
In November 2019, the gang rape and murder of a 26-year-old veterinary doctor in Shamshabad, near Hyderabad, sparked outrage across India. Her body was found in Shadnagar on 28 November 2019, the day after she was murdered. Four suspects were arrested and, according to the Cyberabad Metropolitan Police, confessed to having raped and killed the doctor.
John William Kelley is an American serial killer and rapist. Following his 2012 arrest for the 1986 rape-murder of a hitchhiker in Ben Lomond, California, Kelley additionally confessed to murdering a couple two years later in Jedediah Smith Redwoods State Park, near Crescent City. For all of his crimes, he received three life imprisonment terms, which he is currently serving at the California Correctional Institution.
Ee Lee was an American woman who was raped and murdered by two black teenagers in a racially-motivated daylight attack in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The two perpetrators, Kamare Lewis and Kevin Spencer, pleaded guilty to first-degree reckless homicide and second-degree sexual assault in 2023. Later that year, Lewis was sentenced to 26 years in prison, while Spencer was sentenced to 32 years in prison.
Michael James Perry and Jason Aaron Burkett were American spree killers who killed three people in Texas in 2001. They were both tried and convicted of capital murder for the killings. Perry was sentenced to death and executed in 2010, while Burkett received a life sentence. Their cases were later the subject of Werner Herzog's 2011 documentary, Into the Abyss.
On June 30, 2022, a ten-year-old girl from Columbus, Ohio, United States, traveled to Indiana to get an abortion because abortion law in Ohio did not provide an exception for minor children who became pregnant because of rape. Her case drew national attention and commentary from public figures, due in part to its proximity to the June 24, 2022, decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, which overturned Roe v. Wade and allowed states, including Ohio, to impose substantial limitations on abortion.
