Herbert William Mullin was an American serial killer who killed 13 people in California in the early 1970s. He confessed to the killings, which he claimed prevented earthquakes. In 1973, after a trial to determine whether he was legally insane or culpable, he was convicted of two murders in the first-degree and nine in the second-degree and sentenced to life imprisonment. During his imprisonment, he was denied parole eight times.
David Michael Krueger, best known by his birth name Peter Woodcock, was a Canadian serial killer, child rapist and diagnosed psychopath. He gained notoriety for the murders of three young children in Toronto in the late 1950s, as well as for a murder in 1991 on his first day of unsupervised release from the psychiatric institution in which he had been incarcerated for his earlier crimes.
Carol Mary Bundy was an American double murderer and suspected serial killer. Bundy and Doug Clark became collectively known as the Sunset Strip Killers after being convicted of a series of lust murders in Los Angeles during the late spring and early summer of 1980.
Antron Singleton, better known by his stage name Big Lurch, is an American rapper, poet and convicted murderer. He is serving a life sentence for murdering 21-year-old roommate Tynisha Ysais and eating parts of her body in April 2002. He was a member of the group Cosmic Slop Shop.
James Donald French was an American double murderer who was the last person executed under Oklahoma's death penalty laws prior to Furman v. Georgia, which suspended capital punishment in the United States from 1972 until 1976.
Sean Richard Sellers was an American serial killer, one of 22 persons in the United States since the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976 to be executed for a crime committed while under the age of 18, and the only one to have been executed for a crime committed under the age of 17. His case drew worldwide attention due to his age as well as his jailhouse conversion to Christianity and his claim that demonic possession made him innocent of his crimes.
Charles Troy Coleman was an American convicted murderer and suspected serial killer who was executed in 1990 by the state of Oklahoma. He was convicted in 1979 of the murder of John Seward, who, along with his wife, was killed by a shotgun blast in rural Muskogee County, when they interrupted a robbery at a relative's house. He also murdered Russell E. Lewis in a fatal carjacking in 1979 and is suspected of murdering the father of his former girlfriend in 1975. Despite being accused of killing at least three people, he was never convicted of the murder of Seward's wife and his sentence for Lewis's murder was overturned.
Since the 1994 film Natural Born Killers was released, several attacks suspected to be copycat crimes have been committed by fans of the film, mostly by high school students within the age range of 15 to 18. Though apparent links have been claimed between the film and most of the incidents described below, certain causality has not been proven.
On September 25, 2014, Alton Nolen attacked two employees at the Vaughan Foods food processing plant in Moore, Oklahoma, United States, with a knife. He beheaded Colleen Hufford, and also stabbed another employee, Traci Johnson, who was critically injured. Nolen, whom the plant had fired prior to the attack, was shot and wounded by Vaughan Foods chief operating officer Mark Vaughan. The attack came to national attention due to its gruesome nature, which followed a well-publicized recent series of beheadings carried out by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
Robert Willard Liberty, known as The Candlelight Killer, was an American serial killer who murdered two men in Southern California from March to June 1970 in ritualistic style, and left taunting messages behind for authorities to find. Liberty had spent three years in a mental hospital prior to the murders for killing his girlfriend in 1966. In 1971, while awaiting trial for the new killings, Liberty was murdered by a fellow inmate.
John Michael Hooker was an American serial killer who killed his girlfriend and her mother in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma in 1988, after having served time for a manslaughter conviction as a teenager. For the latter crimes, Hooker was convicted, sentenced to death and executed in 2003.
Raymond Eugene Johnson killed his ex-girlfriend and her infant daughter in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 2007, shortly after being paroled from a previous manslaughter conviction in 1995. For the latter crimes, Johnson was convicted and sentenced to death, and is currently awaiting execution.
Mario James Jerrell Normore is an American serial killer and bank robber who committed four murders from July to October 2017 around Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, shortly after being released from prison for a robbery conviction. He pleaded guilty to the crimes in 2023, and was subsequently sentenced to four life terms without parole.
On July 6, 1984, in Elk City, Oklahoma, 7-year-old Layla Cummings was abducted, raped, and murdered by Richard Norman Rojem Jr., who was previously convicted and jailed for sex offenses. Rojem, who was formerly married to Cummings's mother before their divorce, was convicted of murdering Cummings and sentenced to death in 1985. Rojem, who failed in multiple attempts to overturn his death sentence, was incarcerated on death row for close to 40 years before he was executed via lethal injection on June 27, 2024, after the state parole board rejected his appeal for clemency.
Phillip Dean Hancock was an American convicted murderer who killed a total of three people between 1982 and 2001. In 1982, Hancock was charged with fatally shooting a drug trafficker, Charles Lester Warren, which he claimed was a killing done in self-defense, and he was subsequently given a four-year jail term for first-degree manslaughter. 19 years later, Hancock would commit the double murder of James Vincent Lynch III and Robert Lee Jett Jr. by shooting both of them to death in 2001, for which he similarly claimed were killings done in self-defense. However, Hancock was found guilty of two counts of first-degree murder and sentenced to death. Hancock, who stood by his claims of self-defense throughout the post-conviction appeal process, was eventually executed via lethal injection on November 30, 2023.
On January 24, 1985, in Oklahoma City, 35-year-old schoolteacher Linda Reaves and her boyfriend Douglas Ivens were both shot by Bigler Stouffer. Stouffer was the boyfriend of Ivens' estranged wife Velva Ivens, who targeted Ivens for his $2 million life insurance policy. Ivens survived three gunshot wounds to his body, but Reaves was mortally wounded and died from two gunshot wounds to the head.
On June 19, 1992, in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, United States, 31-year-old convenience store owner Kenneth Meers was murdered during a robbery perpetrated by two gunmen. The murderers, Glenn Bethany and Emmanuel Littlejohn, were arrested and charged with robbing and murdering Meers. Littlejohn was sentenced to death, while Bethany received a life sentence in separate trials between 1993 and 1994.
On December 20, 1996, in Oklahoma, 21-year-old Juli Busken, a University of Oklahoma dance student and resident of Benton, Arkansas, was abducted from her apartment's parking lot and subsequently raped and murdered by an unknown assailant. The case remained unsolved for years before the killer was caught while he was in jail for burglary.
Steven Ray Thacker was an American convicted murderer who murdered a total of three people in three different states across the U.S. On December 23, 1999, Thacker kidnapped and murdered 25-year-old Laci Dawn Hill in Oklahoma, before he fled to Missouri in a stolen car. During a robbery in Missouri, Thacker killed 24-year-old Forrest Reed Boyd, and he subsequently drove Boyd's car to Tennessee, where he killed 52-year-old tow truck driver Ray Patterson.
Warren Barnes was a 69-year old homeless man who was living in Grand Junction, Colorado, United States. He was murdered and dismembered on February 27, 2021, by Brian Cohee while he was sleeping near Crosby Avenue below a highway bridge. Cohee confessed to the police and was arrested on March 1, 2021. On February 3, 2023, he was found guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
