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.
John Wayne Glover was an English-Australian serial killer convicted of the murders of six elderly women, over a period of 14 months from 1989 to 1990 including Winifreda, Lady Ashton, widow of the English-Australian impressionist painter Sir Will Ashton, in suburbs located in Sydney's North Shore. The fact that the victims were all elderly women led to Glover attaining the nickname by the press of The Granny Killer. Following his arrest in 1990, he admitted to the murders and was sentenced to consecutive terms of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. He hanged himself in prison on 9 September 2005.
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 18 murders and is suspected of having killed up to as many as 44 people.
Anita Lorraine Cobby was a 26-year-old Australian woman from Blacktown, New South Wales, who was kidnapped while walking home from Blacktown railway station just before 10:00 p.m. on 2 February 1986, and subsequently sexually assaulted and murdered.
The Old Maitland Gaol, also known as Maitland Correctional Centre, is a heritage-listed former Australian prison located in East Maitland, New South Wales. Its construction was started in 1844 and prisoners first entered the gaol in 1848. By the time of its closure, on 31 January 1998, it had become the longest continuously-run gaol in Australia. It has since been turned into a museum and is a popular tourist attraction. It was added to the New South Wales State Heritage Register on 2 April 1999.
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.
Peter Falconio was a British tourist who disappeared in a remote part of the Stuart Highway near Barrow Creek in the Northern Territory of Australia on the evening of 14 July 2001, while travelling with his girlfriend Joanne Lees.
This is a timeline of major crimes in Australia.
The Bega schoolgirl murders refer to the abduction, rape and murder of two Australian schoolgirls; 14-year-old Lauren Margaret Barry and 16-year-old Nichole Emma Collins of Bega, New South Wales, Australia on 6 October 1997. They were abducted by Leslie Camilleri and Lindsay Beckett, both from the New South Wales town of Yass. The men subjected the girls to repeated rapes and sexual assaults on five or more separate occasions, while driving them to remote locations throughout rural New South Wales and Victoria. Over a twelve-hour period, the girls had been driven several hundred kilometres from Bega to Fiddler's Green Creek in Victoria, where they were stabbed to death by Beckett under the order of Camilleri.
Chester Dewayne Turner is an American serial killer and sex offender who was sentenced to death for sexually assaulting and murdering fourteen women and an unborn baby in Los Angeles between 1987 and 1998.
The murder of Ebony Jane Simpson occurred on 19 August 1992 in Bargo, New South Wales, Australia. Aged nine years, Simpson was abducted, raped, and murdered by asphyxiation when Andrew Peter Garforth drowned her. Garforth pleaded guilty to the crimes and was sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.
Mark Goudeau is an American serial killer, kidnapper, thief and rapist. Goudeau terrorized victims in the Phoenix metro area between August 2005 and June 2006; coincidentally, Goudeau was active at the same time as two other Phoenix serial killers, jointly known as the "Serial Shooters.”
This is a list of notable overturned convictions in the United States.
Allan Baker and Kevin Crump are a notorious Australian duo of rapists and double murderers who were sentenced to life imprisonment in 1974. Baker is serving his sentence at Clarence Correctional Centre whereas Crump died incarcerated at Wellington Correctional Centre in 2023.
Derrick Todd Lee, also known as The Baton Rouge Serial Killer, was an American serial killer who, from 1998 to 2003, terrorized the areas surrounding Baton Rouge and Lafayette, Louisiana, by committing the murders of at least seven women.
Timothy Wilson Spencer, also known as The Southside Strangler, was an American serial killer who committed three rapes and murders in Richmond, Virginia, and one in Arlington, Virginia, in the fall of 1987. In addition, he is believed to have committed at least one previous murder, in 1984, for which a different man, David Vasquez, was wrongfully convicted. He was known to police as a prolific home burglar.
The murder of Leigh Leigh, born Leigh Rennea Mears, occurred on 3 November 1989 while she was attending a 16-year-old boy's birthday party at Stockton Beach, New South Wales, on the east coast of Australia. The 14-year-old girl from Fern Bay was assaulted by a group of boys after she returned distressed from a sexual encounter on the beach that a reviewing judge later called non-consensual. After being kicked and spat on by the group, Leigh left the party. Her naked body was found in the sand dunes nearby the following morning, with severe genital damage and a crushed skull.
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 Mid North Coast Correctional Centre, an Australian minimum to maximum security prison for males and females, is located in Aldavilla, West Kempsey, New South Wales, Australia, 455 kilometres (283 mi) north of Sydney. The facility is operated by Corrective Services NSW, an agency of the Department of Communities and Justice, of the Government of New South Wales. The Centre accepts sentenced and unsentenced felons under New South Wales and/or Commonwealth legislation.
Alun Kyte, known as the Midlands Ripper, is an English double murderer, serial rapist, child rapist, paedophile and suspected serial killer. He was convicted in 2000 of the murders of two sex workers, 20-year-old Samo Paull and 30-year-old Tracey Turner, whom he killed in December 1993 and March 1994 respectively. After his conviction, investigators announced their suspicions that Kyte could have been behind a number of other unsolved murders of sex workers across Britain in the 1980s and 1990s. He was apprehended due to the ground-breaking investigations of a wider police inquiry named Operation Enigma, which was launched in 1996 in response to the murders of Paull, Turner and of a large number of other sex workers. Kyte was sentenced to a minimum of 25 years imprisonment for the murders of Paull and Turner.
