San Quentin Rehabilitation Center (SQ), formerly known as San Quentin State Prison, is a California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation state prison for men, located north of San Francisco in the unincorporated place of San Quentin in Marin County.
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.
Joseph Paul Franklin was an American serial killer, white supremacist, and domestic terrorist who engaged in a murder spree spanning the late 1970s and early 1980s.
Ottis Elwood Toole was an American serial killer who was convicted of six counts of murder. Like his companion Henry Lee Lucas, Toole made confessions which resulted in murder convictions, and which he later recanted. The discrediting of the case against Lucas for crimes for which Toole had offered corroborating statements created doubts as to whether either was a genuine serial killer or, as Hugh Aynesworth suggested, both were merely compliant interviewees whom police used to clear unsolved murders from the books.
Mohammed Bijeh was an Iranian serial killer. He was convicted of raping and killing around 20 children, mostly boys, and was sentenced to 100 lashes followed by execution. All the boys were between 8 and 15 years old. The murder of children around Tehran was recognized as the largest criminal case in contemporary Iranian history and provoked national outrage. Bijeh's execution, which was witnessed by over 5,000 people including children, sparked debates on whether public executions should continue within the country.
Levi Bellfield is an English serial killer, sex offender, rapist, kidnapper, and burglar. He was found guilty on 25 February 2008 of the murders of Marsha McDonnell and Amélie Delagrange and the attempted murder of Kate Sheedy, and sentenced to life imprisonment. On 23 June 2011, Bellfield was further found guilty of the murder of Milly Dowler. On both occasions, the judge imposed a whole life order, meaning that Bellfield will serve the sentence without the possibility of parole. Bellfield was the first prisoner in history to have received two whole life orders.
Dale Shawn Hausner and Samuel John Dieteman were a duo of serial killers who committed several drive-by shootings and arsons in Phoenix, Arizona, between May 2005 and August 2006. They targeted random pedestrians and animals, mostly doing so while under the influence of methamphetamine, and also set multiple objects on fire. Investigators believe they were responsible for eight murders and at least 29 other shootings. The investigation of their crimes coincided with the search for the Baseline Killer, who was also committing random murders and sexual assaults in the Phoenix area.
Tommy Lynn Sells was an American serial killer, often referred to as "the Coast to Coast Killer" due to his claims of committing murders across the United States. Though convicted of only one murder, for which he received the death penalty and was eventually executed in 2014, he is believed to have committed at least 22 murders, with Sells himself claiming over 70 victims.
Joseph Edward Duncan III was an American convicted serial killer and child molester who was on death row in federal prison following the 2005 kidnappings and murders of members of the Groene family of Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. He was also serving 11 consecutive sentences of life without parole for the 1997 murder of Anthony Martinez of Beaumont, California. Additionally, Duncan confessed to — but had not been charged with — the 1996 murder of two girls, Sammiejo White and Carmen Cubias, in Seattle, Washington. At the time of the attack on the Groene family, Duncan was on the run from a child molestation charge in Minnesota.
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 ten women in the Tampa Bay area in Florida during an eight-month period in 1984.
Donald Harvey was an American serial killer who claimed to have murdered 87 people, though he has 37 confirmed victims. He was able to do this during his time as a hospital orderly. His spree took place between 1970 and 1987.
Darbara Singh was an Indian serial killer who was convicted of two murders.
Shawn Michael Grate is an American serial killer and rapist who was sentenced to death for the murders of five young women in and around northern Ohio from 2006 to 2016. Grate was convicted on two counts of aggravated murder on May 7, 2018, in Ashland County, pleaded guilty to two additional murders on March 1, 2019, in Richland County, and pleaded guilty to an additional murder on September 11, 2019, in Marion County.
Samuel Little was an American serial killer who was convicted of eight murders and 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.
Jeong Nam-gyu was a South Korean serial killer, who from 2004 to 2006 killed 14 people.
Jorge Avila-Torrez is an American serial killer and rapist. A resident of Zion, Illinois, Avila-Torrez murdered two girls who lived in his neighborhood in 2005 and later murdered a female Petty officer in 2009 at Joint Base Myer–Henderson Hall. He was sentenced to death by the federal government for that crime as well as receiving a 100-year sentence for the Illinois murders. On December 23, 2024, President Joe Biden issued a commutation to 37 out of the 40 inmates on the federal death row. Avila-Torrez's federal death sentence was commuted by President Biden.
William Lewis Reece is an American serial killer, rapist and kidnapper. In 2015, he was linked via DNA to the 1997 cold case murder of a woman in Oklahoma, for which he was subsequently convicted and sentenced to death. Not long after, he confessed to three murders associated with the Texas Killing Fields, for which he was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment in 2022.
