Henry Lee Lucas, also known as the Confession Killer, was an American convicted murderer. Lucas was convicted of murdering his mother in 1960 and two others in 1983. He rose to infamy as a claimed serial killer while incarcerated for these crimes when he falsely confessed to approximately 600 other murders to Texas Rangers and other law enforcement officials. Many unsolved cases were closed based on the confessions and the murders officially attributed to Lucas. He was convicted of murdering eleven people and condemned to death for a single case with a then-unidentified victim, later identified as Debra Jackson.
Robert Christian Boes Hansen, popularly known as the Butcher Baker, was an American serial killer active in Anchorage, Alaska, between 1972 and 1983. Hansen abducted, raped and murdered at least seventeen women. Many of the women abducted were released by Hansen into the wilderness and hunted with a Ruger Mini-14 and hunting knives. Hansen was captured in 1983 and sentenced to 461 years' imprisonment without the possibility of parole. He died in 2014 of natural causes at age 75.
Larry Gene Bell was an American murderer and suspected serial killer in Lexington County, South Carolina, who was executed by electrocution for the murders of Sharon Smith and Debra Helmick. Bell forced Smith to write a "Last Will and Testament" before he murdered her and taunted her family by telephone. He is also believed to have been responsible for other murders.
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.
Bobby Joe Long was an American serial killer and rapist who was executed by the state of Florida for the murder of Michelle Denise Simms. Long abducted, sexually assaulted, and murdered at least eight women in the Tampa Bay area in Florida during an eight-month period in 1984.
Nathaniel White is an American serial killer. Active in the Hudson Valley region, in and near Orange County, NY during the early 1990s, White confessed to beating and stabbing six women to death while on parole.
Sidney Charles Cooke is an English convicted child molester, murderer and suspected serial killer and serial rapist serving two life sentences. He was the leader of a paedophile ring suspected of up to twenty child murders of young boys in the 1970s and 1980s. Cooke and other members of the ring were convicted of three killings in total, although he was only convicted of one himself.
Ivan Robert Marko Milat, commonly referred to in media as the Backpacker Murderer, was an Australian serial killer who abducted, assaulted, robbed and murdered two men and five women in New South Wales between 1989 and 1992. His modus operandi was to approach backpackers along the Hume Highway under the guise of providing them transport to areas of southern New South Wales, then take his victims into the Belanglo State Forest where he would incapacitate and murder them. Milat is also suspected of having committed many other similar offences around Australia.
The Texas Killing Fields is a title used to roughly denote the area surrounding the Interstate Highway 45 corridor southeast of Houston, where since the early 1970s, more than 30 bodies have been found, and specifically to a 25-acre patch of land in League City, Texas where four women were found between 1983 and 1991. The bodies along the corridor were mainly of girls or young women. Furthermore, many additional young girls have disappeared from this area who are still missing. Most of the victims were aged between 12 and 25 years. Some shared similar physical features, such as similar hairstyles.
Joseph Naso, also known as Crazy Joe or the Double Initial Killer, is an American serial killer and serial rapist sentenced to death for the murders of at least four women.
Beverly Rose Potts was a ten-year-old American girl who disappeared while walking home from a neighborhood festival event held in a park less than a quarter of a mile from her Cleveland, Ohio home. Despite intense publicity and repeated, exhaustive efforts to locate the girl, both at the time of her disappearance and in more recent decades, no trace of Potts or definitive leads as to the circumstances surrounding her disappearance have ever materialized. Foul play is strongly suspected, although no definitive suspect has ever been identified.
Mark Anthony Tildesley was a seven-year-old English child who disappeared on 1 June 1984 whilst visiting a funfair in Wokingham, Berkshire. A widespread search of the Wokingham area, involving both police officers and British Army soldiers, did not locate him. Thames Valley Police initially suspected that his body was buried near Wellington Road in Wokingham, near the funfair from which he was abducted, but they now believe that he was probably buried in a shallow grave on abandoned farmland.
Joanne Ratcliffe and Kirste Jane Gordon were two Australian girls who went missing while attending an Australian rules football match at the Adelaide Oval on 25 August 1973. Their disappearance, and presumed abduction and murder, became one of South Australia's most infamous crimes. The presumed murders are thought by South Australia Police and the media to be related to the disappearance of the Beaumont children in 1966. The case is sometimes referred to as the Adelaide Oval abductions.
Cheryl Gene Grimmer was a three-year-old Australian toddler who was kidnapped from Fairy Meadow Beach in Wollongong, New South Wales, in January 1970. She had been in the shower block at the beach when witnesses claim a man took her and ran off.
Sara Anne Wood was a twelve-year-old American girl who disappeared while riding her bicycle home from Norwich Corners Church in Sauquoit, New York. She is believed to have been abducted less than half a mile from her own home by convicted child killer Lewis Stephen Lent Jr.
Samuel Little was an American serial killer of women who confessed to committing 93 murders between 1970 and 2005. The Federal Bureau of Investigation's Violent Criminal Apprehension Program has confirmed his involvement in at least 60 murders, the largest number of confirmed victims for any serial killer in American history. Little provided sketches for twenty-six of his victims although not all have been linked to known murders.
Jonelle Matthews was a 12-year-old American girl who disappeared near Greeley, Colorado, on December 20, 1984. Her remains were discovered on July 24, 2019, by construction workers putting in a new pipeline 15 miles (24 km) from her home. Steven Pankey was sentenced to life imprisonment on October 31, 2022, after his arrest and trial for Matthews' murder.
Othram is an American corporation specializing in forensic genetic genealogy to resolve unsolved murders, disappearances, and identification of unidentified decedents or murder victims. The company offers law enforcement agencies tools and programs to infer kinship among individuals, closely and distantly related, through a combination of short tandem repeat and single nucleotide polymorphism testing, as well as forensic genome sequencing of DNA.
James Keene is an American author, writer, executive film producer, and businessman.
David Elliott Penton is an American child molester and serial killer. Penton, an Ohio native and mechanic, was convicted of manslaughter in the child abuse death of his own infant son in 1984; during an appeal of his sentence, he fled and remained a fugitive until 1987, when he was charged and convicted with the murder of a friend's 9-year-old niece in Ohio.
