Top 10 Spine-chilling Serial Killer Stories
These Serial Killer stories will haunt your dreams and scare your kids.
10. Gilles de Rais
A relatively underground and unknown serial killer, and the subject of a Jim Shepard short story, Gilles de Rais was about as messed up as a 15th-century knight could possibly get.
Despite his many accomplishments, and his interesting friendship with Joan of Arc, Gilles de Rais spent a large portion of his time molesting and slaughtering young boys with the help of his bodyservants and cousins in a distinguished French castle. When his victims had been abused and killed, Gilles de Rais kissed them and often sat on their dead bodies, laughing.
Their bodies were then incinerated in Gilles’ bedroom fireplace. Though some claim that he was framed for political reasons, this totally mental knight was hanged and burned in 1440.
Don't miss APPROPRIATE ADULT, the story of British serial killer Fred West, starring The Wire's Dominic West with Academy Award nominated actress Emily Watson.
9. Jack the Ripper
The legend of Jack the Ripper is one of history’s most notorious and frightening. Though he is wildly infamous, a large portion of the murders associated with him may not actually have been committed by him.
But what makes him so scary and important is the fact that his identity was never discovered and he appears to have been a man of learning and education, which was pretty scary in the late 1800s in England. When he slit the throats of the prostitutes he killed, he would then slash open their abdomens and often take their uteruses or other body parts.
In 2006, BBC History Magazine named him the worst Briton to have ever lived. I might be able to think of a few worse, but to each is own, I suppose.
Don't miss APPROPRIATE ADULT, the story of British serial killer Fred West, starring The Wire's Dominic West with Academy Award nominated actress Emily Watson.
Author: Dayna Evans
Photo Credit: Hulton Archive/Getty Images8. Albert Fish
In the same way that Ludacris claimed he had hos in different area codes, Albert Fish made the claim that he had children in every state. And yes, that is as terrifying as it sounds. Albert Fish, also known as The Gray Man, The Werewolf of Wysteria, The Brooklyn Vampire, and The Boogey Man, does not only have the coolest nicknames of any serial killer on this list, but is also one of the most insane. His black-and-white mug shot in a bowler hat is enough to frighten even the toughest of your older brother’s hot friends.
In the early 1900s, Fish abducted, raped, murdered, then cannibalized several small children, and then claimed that the number was way more than just “several.” Fish told his investigators that he had victimized over four hundred youngsters. He infamously lured ten-year-old Grace Budd to a fake children’s birthday party, instead killing her and eating her, causing a six-year investigation into her disappearance. When Fish was discovered, he was sentenced to the electric chair despite his pleas of insanity. Still the sketchiest looking dude I’ve ever seen.
Don't miss APPROPRIATE ADULT, the story of British serial killer Fred West, starring The Wire's Dominic West with Academy Award nominated actress Emily Watson.
Author: Dayna Evans
7. Son of Sam
Ah, a Brooklyner makes the list. David Berkowitz, childhood pyromaniac and U.S. Postal Service worker, was a shining media star during the heated, violent era of the 70s in New York City. Imagine WARRIORS, but worse. After demons encouraged him to make his first kill, he moved to Yonkers, where he began his life as the Son of Sam, which is one of the best serial killer names of all time because all your friends named Sam are eternally screwed with association to the crazy man himself. And he wasn’t just normal level crazy, he believed that dogs were possessed by demons and these demon dogs were telling him what to do. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen Snoopy but come on, dogs don’t have that much going on up there. There were several letters sent to the press, six killings, and seven wounded victims, and at the end of it all, Berkowitz was sentenced to 365 years in jail, for which he has claimed he’d like to serve in its entirety. A born-again Christian and apparently a stellar prisoner, Berkowitz has now accepted his crime and takes full responsibility for it. At least one of these guys does.
Don't miss APPROPRIATE ADULT, the story of British serial killer Fred West, starring The Wire's Dominic West with Academy Award nominated actress Emily Watson.
Author: Dayna Evans
Photo Credit: Hulton Archive/Getty Images6. John Wayne Gacy
When John Wayne Gacy was canonized in song by Sufjan Stevens, he was suddenly reintroduced to the world in a new light. Never before did we think we’d see the Killer Clown presented to us as an indie-twee hero, and if I remember correctly, a lot of people gave Stevens a hard time about the song, especially because its lyrics indicated that Stevens wasn’t so unlike Gacy. (For the record, Sufjan, you probably couldn’t be more unlike this total psychopath.)
Gacy brought to life our worst nightmare by dressing up as a clown and volunteering at charitable events and kids’ birthday parties and then—oh yeah—kidnapping teenage boys, raping them, and killing them. It’s like the clown thing wasn’t enough.
And let’s not forget that his neighbors all thought he was “so normal.” “So normal” doesn’t have thirty-three victims.
Don't miss APPROPRIATE ADULT, the story of British serial killer Fred West, starring The Wire's Dominic West with Academy Award nominated actress Emily Watson.
Author: Dayna Evans
Photo Credit: Tim Boyle/Getty Images5. The Zodiac Killer
While writing this list, I’ve several times had to ask myself why there are so many serial killers in California. I thought that California was the Golden State, not the Everyone Dies Here State.
The Zodiac Killer, who has still never been caught (which is so unbelievably creepy for all my NorCal homies sipping on yerba mate and eating granola), is the kind of killer that could fuel scary movies for all of eternity. He is like the cliché movie killer before it became cliché. He sent letters to the press demanding that they be published or else he’d go on a murdering rampage by killing a dozen people in weekend.
Then he sent cryptograms that were deciphered into psychopathic nonsense that still didn’t reveal a name or a suspect, but began with “Dear Editor this is the Zodiac speaking.” The thought and time invested in the Zodiac murders has been endless on both the murderer’s and the police force’s part, but it seems that no one is any closer to getting a suspect nailed down. Though, for future reference, if you know a dude named “Robert Emmet the Hippie,” the Zodiac killer’s cryptograms can potentially be decoded to reveal that signature. All hippies are suspects, so do not suspend your suspicion of their shady behavior.
Don't miss APPROPRIATE ADULT, the story of British serial killer Fred West, starring The Wire's Dominic West with Academy Award nominated actress Emily Watson.
Author: Dayna Evans
Photo Credit: Hulton Archive/Getty Images4. Richard Ramírez
Known to the world as the “Night Stalker,” Richard Ramírez is what little kids’ nightmares are made of. With fourteen-plus victims, Ramírez was no joke, as he completely terrorized the Los Angeles area in the mid-80s, breaking into peoples’ houses at night and brutally raping, murdering, and occasionally molesting and mutilating their dead bodies.
He became known for post-mortem mutilation of his victims, carving a T into one woman’s breast, while also gouging out her eyes. And is if that weren’t bad enough, over time, he began to associate himself with Satanism, marking his victims and their houses with pentagrams written in lipstick.
Ramírez, whose photo had been published in the press, was caught by a mob in a dangerous area of Los Angeles and was beaten with steal rods, then subdued by them until police arrived. He was arrested, then jailed, then sentenced to death row. Upon hearing his sentence, the Night Stalker merely responded, “Big deal.” Seriously. What a psycho.
Don't miss APPROPRIATE ADULT, the story of British serial killer Fred West, starring The Wire's Dominic West with Academy Award nominated actress Emily Watson.
Author: Dayna Evans
3. Fred West
If there is anything scarier than just a plain old serial killer, it's a plain old serial killer with more secrets to reveal. Fred West, one of Britain's most disturbed and terrifying serial killers, was arrested in connection to over a dozen murders of young women buried on the property of his Gloucester home.
Fine, a simple—and sickening—enough story at first glance. But once West began interrogations with the police, he began to confess to a lot more evil than ever imaginable, and the worst is who he was confessing it to: Janet Leach, who was serving as an impartial party assigned to protect particularly vulnerable adults. Over the course of the investigation, West revealed to his "appropriate adult" that in fact, his wife had been involved and was just as guilty as he. They had raped and murdered over twenty women, according to his testimony. In 1995, West hung himself while in jail, where his wife, Rose, still remains. An interesting tidbit about Fred West is that he was once an ice-cream truck driver, so, really, who can you trust these days?
Don't miss APPROPRIATE ADULT, the story of British serial killer Fred West, starring The Wire's Dominic West with Academy Award nominated actress Emily Watson.
Author: Dayna Evans
2. The Long Island Serial Killer
Just when you thought Long Island couldn’t get any scarier, an unidentified serial killer has popped up over the past year and no one can seem to catch him. In a way, the other serial killers are nowhere near as scary because at least they are either dead or have been convicted.
This guy (or girl?) is still on the loose, rampaging sex-trade workers, wrapping their bodies in burlap sacks, and disposing of them in quiet beach towns on Long Island. The number continues to rise (though some aren’t necessarily attributed to the same suspect), and the New York area grows a little more frightened with each discovery.
As body parts continue to turn up, the Jane Doe case frightfully continues.
Don't miss APPROPRIATE ADULT, the story of British serial killer Fred West, starring The Wire's Dominic West with Academy Award nominated actress Emily Watson.
Author: Dayna Evans
1. Ted Bundy
While looking up the details of Ted Bundy's brutal murders, of which there are potentially over 35, I squealed. The photograph of him in court is unfalteringly scary, to the point of it being actually upsetting. He has a weirdly handsome face, but a pair of bug eyes that belie his insanity.
What a monster. Another serial killer doing his deeds in the 70s (what was up with that era, anyway?), Bundy was just about the worst of them. When a serial killer begins keeping body parts as mementos, which Bundy did with the severed heads of several women, we are talking about something very next level.
Ladies, beware of any man who approaches you in a public place acting as an invalid, then lures you to somewhere more private. He is probably Ted Bundy reincarnated. And now that I think about it, that sounds like every guy I've ever dated.
Don't miss APPROPRIATE ADULT, the story of British serial killer Fred West, starring The Wire's Dominic West with Academy Award nominated actress Emily Watson.
Author: Dayna Evans
