Serial killers with the highest known victim count. The most prolific modern serial killer is arguably Dr. Harold Shipman, with 218 probable murders and possibly as many as 250 (see "Medical professionals", below).
1. Harold Shipman: “Dr. Death” who killed 218 patients. One of history's deadliest serial killers was a married family man who managed to squeeze in 218 credited murders (and as many as 250) while working as a popular British physician.
But both Hitler and Stalin were outdone by Mao Zedong. From 1958 to 1962, his Great Leap Forward policy led to the deaths of up to 45 million people—easily making it the biggest episode of mass murder ever recorded.
1. Dennis Rader, AKA the BTK Killer. Dennis Rader was a serial killer in Kansas who murdered 10 people over the span of three decades, dubbing himself BTK because he bound, tortured, and killed his victims. He committed his first murders in January of 1974 when he strangled four family members, including two children.
The triad links cruelty to animals, obsession with fire-setting, and persistent bedwetting past the age of five, to violent behaviors, particularly homicidal behavior and sexually predatory behavior.
Today, though, those achievements can only be seen in the shadow of the secret life he led as the perpetrator of more than a hundred gruesome child murders, a rampage which made him arguably the first serial killer in recorded history. The early life of Gilles de Rais was marked by tragedy.
Craig Price is the youngest serial killer in U.S. history.
Since men perpetrate about 90% of the world's homicides, it makes sense that nearly all of history's most notorious serial killers are men. But they do have a small number of female counterparts, and they are just as deadly. Today, we look at some of the most horrifyingly ruthless female serial killers ever.
Serial murder is a relatively rare event, estimated to comprise less than one percent of all murders committed in any given year.
World War I killed 116,516 Americans. World War II killed 405,399 Americans.
The day with the most deaths in human history was 23 January 1556. That was the day of the Shaanxi earthquake in China, which killed about 830,000 people.
Sister Agatha: The World's Oldest Serial Killer by Domhnall O'Donoghue - Book Tour. Sister Agatha is 118 years of age, whose vim and vigour would put the most robust athletes to shame.
The Babysitter Killer. The Oakland County Child Killer, also known as the Babysitter Killer, is an unidentified serial killer who murdered at least four children in Oakland County, Michigan, between 1976 and 1977.
Born in 1998 in the village of Mushahar in Bihar, India, Amarjeet Sada is believed to have murdered three people, including family members, by the time he was eight years old in separate incidents between 2006 and 2007.
These days it's not uncommon for a murderer to achieve some level of celebrity. Names like Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy, Aileen Wournrous and John Wayne Gacy are as recognizable as many Oscar winners.
Seventy-four percent of the murderers were from the United States, where 85 percent were male, 8 percent were female, and the sex was undetermined in the cases in which the offender was still at large. In addition, 82 percent of American serial killers were white, 15 percent were black, and 2.5 percent were Hispanic.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) states that the motives of serial killers can include anger, thrill-seeking, financial gain, and attention seeking, and killings may be executed as such. The victims may have something in common; for example, demographic profile, appearance, gender or race.
Childhood Abuse
Many serial killers are abused – physically, psychologically, sexually – as children by a close family member. This behavior instills in the child feelings of humiliation and helplessness, feelings which they will later seek to instill in their victims.
According to The Mirror, Amarjeet Sada, an Indian from Bihar, is said to be the youngest serial murderer. He killed three people by the time he was eight years old.
Lionel Alexander Tate, 13
He said he had the young girl in a headlock when she hit her head on a nearby table.
Báthory is often proclaimed the most prolific female serial killer of all time, accused of slaying more than 600 young women inside her lavish castles. According to legend, she believed bathing in their virginal blood would grant her eternal youth. Instead, it assured she lived long in infamy.
The average height of the male serial killers was 5ft 10in and the average height for female killers was 5ft 5in, both of which are taller than the global average. Those with brown eyes were the most common on the list with 25 killers having dark eyes, whereas just 14 had blue eyes.
Many serial killers are survivors of early childhood trauma of some kind – physical or sexual abuse, family dysfunction, emotionally distant or absent parents. Trauma is the single recurring theme in the biographies of most killers As a consequence of this trauma, they suppress their emotional response.