The World's Most Famous Serial Killers

The term serial killer is used to describe a person who has murdered at least two people, these events taking place at different times and during events.

Serial killers are some of the most terrifying people to walk the earth, with their gruesome murders just being another day for them. Most of these killers seek out a specific sort of victim, but others simply seek out the euphoria that their crimes provide them.

The often disguise themselves as an ordinary person, your neighbor who leaves for work the same time everyday and goes unnoticed or without suspicion.

This is a list of some of the scariest serial killers in history.

Albert Fish

Hamilton Howard "Albert" Fish was born on May 19th, 1870, born to Randall, 75-years old, and Ellen, 30-years old. He took on the name Albert after growing tired of other children calling him "Ham and Eggs," He got the name from a deceased sibling.

His father passed away when he was only 5, this left his mother with the tough decision to put her children in an orphanage until she was able to find a way to support them by herself.

It is said that Albert's time in the orphanage shaped him into who became later in life. He was frequently faced with physical abuse, but instead of turning away from the pain, he discovered that he enjoyed it. At age 10, his mother found herself working for the government and was finally able to support her children, bringing them home from the orphanage. But, it was too late for Albert, the abuse had left scars on his body, and left damage to him mentally as well.

At age 20, Albert was living in New York City working as a prostitute, it was around this time he started to sexually abuse young boys. And it was also the time that his mother arranged a marriage for him, Anna Mary Hoffman was nine years younger than Albert, but was faithful, they had six children together.

He attempted to live a normal life after his marriage, finding a job as a house painter. But his new found employment did not put a halt to his disgusting behavior, he continued to rape young boys during this time.

He told a story about a male lover who took him to a wax museum, it was here that he found a new fascination with pens bisection, sexual mutilation quickly became a obsession of his. He committed his first mutilation in Wilmington, Delaware in 1910. Thomas Kedden was the victim of his, he was only 19-years old, young and impressionable. Albert forced Thomas into a relationship, eventually taking the boy to a farmhouse where he kept him and tortured him over a span of two weeks. At the end of the two weeks, Albert mutilated him. Albert said he would never forget the screams or the look on the boy's face.

It was around 1919 when Albert began stabbing young men who were either mentally handicapped or African American, he felt as if these victims would not be missed. He also became fond of paying other children to help him catch other children so he was able to torture and murder them. However, there was no verification that these murders truly took place, Albert made a number of claims after his arrest. By 1924, he was suffering from full-on psychosis, believing that God was commanding him to to torture and murder these children.

When he was finally arrested, he was quick to brag that he had "children in every state" as well as claiming he had upwards of 100 victims.

Edmund Kemper

Edmund was born on December 18th, 1948 in Burbank, California, it was from a young age that be begun to display troubling behavior. He had a troubling childhood, his mother, Clarnell, was an alcoholic who was speculated to have been suffering from borderline personality disorder. Her behavior even let Edmund's father, World War II veteran, Edmund Emil Kemper II, to say that his suicide missions during wartime and the atom bomb testing's were nothing compared to having to live with Clarnell. She would berate her husband for his job, and refused to coddle her son in the fears it would turn him gay. It was in this dark environment that Edmund began to develop his dark fantasies early on in life. The first sign of troubling behavior was his decapitation of his sisters' dolls.

He would also force his sisters to play disturbing games, such as "electric chair," and "gas chamber," He would even have his sisters march him to his death. He also stalked his second-grade teacher with his father's bayonet. His sister started to tease him about kissing the teacher, but he told her, "If I kiss her, I'd have to kill her first."

His disturbing behavior quickly escalated by the age of 10. He killed both of the family's cats after his father left. He buried one of the cats alive and later decapitated it.

Without his father around, his mother turned her aggression onto her now teenage son, forcing him to sleep in the basement, claiming that he was hurting his sisters. She would berate and insult him, telling him that no woman would ever fall in love with him. And at age 14, he had enough, he ran away from home to live with his father, who had remarried, so he sent him away to live with his grandparents, it was here that he would become a killer.

His life at his grandparents' was no better than at home with his mother. He was unable to please his grandmother, constantly arguing with her, causing him to grow angrier and angrier. And on August 27th, 1964, he got into yet another argument with his grandmother, and at age 15, he shot her in the head with his grandfather's rifle. And when his grandfather walked up the driveway towards their home, he shot him as well. He then called his mother, confessing everything, causing him to be sent to the criminally insane unit of the Atascadero State Hospital. There, the doctor's diagnosed him with paranoid schizophrenia. He was released on his 21st birthday in 1969, he went to live with his mother once again.

It didn't take long for him to indulge in his murderous urges once again, but he attempted to live a normal life first. He applied to be a state trooper, but was denied the position, he was deemed too large at 6'9" and 300 pounds. So, he instead took up a position at the Department of Transportation.

While he drove around California, he noticed many women hitchhiking, so he started to give them rides, claiming at first he would pick up girls to just talk to them, to make friends with people his age. He claimed to have picked up 100 or more girls without any incidents.

But, it wasn't long before he was unable to suppress his urges to kill, "One side of me says, 'Wow, what an attractive chick, I'd like to talk to her, date her,' The other side of me says, 'I wonder how her head would look on a stick.'"

Edmund returned to his violent lifestyle in 1972, on May 7th, he picked up two Fresno State students, Mary Ann Pesce and Anita Luchessa. He then brought the two girls to a wooded area nearby with the intention to rape them, but he ended up panicking, rather he stabbed and choked the two women to death. He then proceeded to stuff them into the trunk of his car and drove them to his home in Alameda, and on the way, he was stopped by an officer for a broken taillight, if he had searched the vehicle, he would of discovered the women, but he let him go without a search.

It wasn't until he returned home that Edmund decided to rape the bodies, proceeding to dismember them after the fact, he then placed the body parts into plastic bags and disposed of them. From here, he continued his murder spree, his next killing taking place on September 14th, 1972. Just like the first two victims, he picked up a hitch-hiker, this time it was 15-year old Aiko Koo.

In reality, his mother was his real target the entire time, and while he was living with Clarnell again, it brought back his memories of his childhood. On April 20th, 1973, he ended up beating his mother to death with a claw hammer as she slept, he then decapitated her, using her head as a dartboard and screaming at it for an hour straight. He then invited his mother's best friend, Sally Hallett over to the house, he had an idea for a cover story that his mother and Sally went on a vacation, so he murdered her as well. Then drove to Colorado, he was certain he would soon see his murders on the news, but after he heard nothing, he called the police from a phone booth and confessed to everything.

Henry Lee Lucas and Ottis Toole

Henry Lee Lucas and Ottis Toole claimed to have murdered hundreds of people together. In the 70's, the couple went on a murder spree across America. The paid raped, killed, and cannibalized their unsuspecting victims. And if their claims are true, they killed more than 600 people together.

But, nobody truly knows how many people the pair killed together, but their confessions helped police close a number of unsolved cases. But, later it was revealed that the two of them were not telling the truth about all of the crimes they claimed to have committed, so they were dubbed as the "Confession Killers." Even beneath their lies, there was terrible truth. They may have not killed the hundreds they claimed, but they still did kill, and violently at that.

Henry and Ottis met in 1976 at a soup kitchen, where they quickly became a couple, they had a mutual attraction, and a mutual desire to kill. The two of them were raised by abusive mothers who forced their sons to dress like women. They both even suffered sexual trauma before the age of 10. And by the time the pair had met, they were both already murderers, Henry had even already served 10 years in prison for the murder of his mother, who he had killed in 1960, at the age of 23.

Henry hated the fact his mother was a sex worker, who had forced him to watch as she serviced her customers. At age 10, he lost an eye because she ignored his infection for too long. Once he hit puberty, he focused his rage on animals and he even sexually assaulted his own brother.

Ottis had a childhood just as bad, maybe even worse. He was assaulted by almost every person he thought he could finally trust. And his mother dressed him as a girl, his older sister had raped him before he reached the age of 10, and his father prostituted him to their neighbor at the age of 5. And when he reached the age of 14, Ottis killed for the first time, a traveling salesman attempted to pick him up for sex, Ottis ended up running the man over with his own car.

The two of them were drawn together by their shared trauma, falling in love very quickly. Soon, they realized they both had a taste for blood, so they embarked on their cross-country murder spree.

They travelled across 26 states in the 70's, killing wherever they went. They would target anyone they could find, ranging from hitchhikers, sex workers, and migrants. Killing was just a way for the two of them to bond.

Andrei Chikatilo

Andrei was born on October 16th, 1936 in Yablochnoye, a village that sat in the heart of rural Ukraine. At the time of his birth, famine was still widely felt, his early childhood was influenced by deprivation. And to make things worse, the USSR entered World War II against Germany, so bombing raids were focused on Ukraine.

To make matters worse on Andrei, it is believed that he suffered from hydrocephalus, water on the brain, at birth, this caused him genital-urinary tract problems as he aged, he experienced bed-wetting well into his teen years, and later on he was unable to sustain an erection, even though he was able to ejaculate.

His home live was flipped upside down when his father was drafted into the war against Germany, where he was captured and held prisoner. Leading Andrei to be bullied in school due to his father's "cowardice" after he returned home.

At age 15, he overpowered a young girl and during the short struggle, he ejaculated immediately, this caused him to received more bullying. This also cemented his association of sex with violence.

Andrei failed his initial entrance exam into Moscow State University. He moved to Rodionovo-Nesvetayevsky, in 1960, this is where got a job as a telephone engineer, his younger sister moved in with him as well, she was concerned by his lack of success with the opposite sex, she set up a meeting with a local girl, who he ended up marrying in 1963. They had two children together and lived a rather normal life. And in 1971, Andrei became a schoolteacher. A string of complaints about assaults on children forced the man to move from school to school, finally settling at a mining school near Rostov.

An eyewitness had seen Andrei with a victim shortly before her disappearance, but his wife provided him with an alibi that allowed him to evade any further attention from police. And perhaps, due to this, there were no more documented victims for three years. However, he was still attacked by multiple claims of child abuse, making it impossible for him to find another teaching job after he was fired from his mining school in 1981. Instead, he got hired as a clerk for a raw materials factory, this position made him travel, which gave him unlimited access to young victims over nine years.

His next victim was Larisa Tkachenko, 17-years old. On September 3rd, 1981, Andrei strangled, stabbed, and gagged Larisa with dirt and leaves to silence her screams. This brutal force caused Andrei to achieve sexual release, this developed a pattern of attack that had him focusing on young runaways of both sexes. He tended to befriend his victims and the lure them into nearby forested areas where he would then attack them, then attempt to rape them before using his knife to mutilate them. In a handful of cases he would eat the sexual organs, or he removed other body parts such as the tip of their noses or tongues.

Richard Chase

Richard Chase was showing signs of mental illness at a young age, but his father, a strict, sometimes abusive parent, did little to get his son any help. Richard was a unhappy and disturbed child, his symptoms grew worse as he became a teen. He set small fires, wet the bed, and showed signs of cruelty towards animals.

His problems grew worse when his father kicked him out of the house, leaving him without supervision, he turned to alcohol and drugs, psychotropic drugs heightened the symptoms of his mental illness. There was even several occasions that his heart stopped, he thought he was a walking corpse during these times. But, being occasionally dead was no reason to neglect his health, he feared that he was lacking vitamin C, so he would press whole oranges to his forehead, he believed that this would help his brain absorb these nutrients. And one of his strangest and most powerful delusions was that he felt as if his cranial bones split apart and shift beneath his skin, changing places as if they were puzzle pieces. This caused him to shave his head to keep track of the movements.

At the age of 25, he was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and sent to an institution to prevent him from becoming a danger to himself.

He had a fascination with blood, this caused him to earn the nickname "Dracula" among the hospital's assistants, these people witnessed him kill and attempt to drink the blood from several birds, he did this to stave off the effects of a poison that he imagined was turning his own blood into a powder. He then tried to inject himself with a rabbit's blood, this made him violently ill, this is what led to his institutionalization. And in spite of several incidents, the staff had believed they successfully rehabilitated Richard, so he was released to his mother. This was a fatal decision, his condition was growing worse, not improving.

Even though he was released to his mother, there was nothing legally binding him to stay with her officially, so he moved out soon after he was released, claiming his mother was poisoning him. He lived with a group of young men, but they didn't know him well, and as he showed unusual behavior, most notably his drug use that would leave him consistently high and walking around their shared living space naked, they asked him to leave. But, Richard refused, and this would lead his roommates to find other lodgings.

His fascination with blood resurfaced once he was living on his own again, he started to capture and kill small animals. He would eat them raw or he would blend their organs with a soda and drink it.

In August of 1977, police discovered him late one night covered in blood, carrying a bucket with a liver in the back of his pickup. They discovered the blood and liver to belong to a cow, so they ended up letting Richard go.

In December 1977, Richard was frustrated and lonely, his own mother hadn't allowed him to come home for Christmas. With his anger, he targeted Ambrose Griffin, a 51-year old man who was helping his wife bring in groceries. As he drove down their street, Richard pulled out a .22-caliber pistol and shot Ambrose in the chest, this started his obsession.

On January 23rd, 1978, Richard entered Teresa Wallin's home through an unlocked door, Teresa was pregnant at the time. He shot her and then stabbed her with a butcher knife, proceeding to cut out her organs and drink her blood.

And his final murder, on January 27th, 1978, just four days following the murder of Teresa, he entered Evelyn Miroth's door, which he found to be unlocked. Inside the home was Evelyn and her six-year old son, Jason, as well has her 22-month old nephew David Ferreira, and a family friend named Dan Meredith.

Richard murdered Dan in the hallway, shooting him in the head, then he stole his car keys. He then discovered Evelyn and Jason in her bedroom, he proceeded to murder the young boy and partially cannibalized Evelyn, he had cut open her stomach and extracted several organs. He also failed to remove one of her eyes, and police also discovered her corpse had been sodomized. David, who Evelyn was babysitting, was missing from the scene of the crime. The child was found four months later behind a church, he had been decapitated.

Richard was arrested after police searched his apartment and found all of his utensils were stained with blood and his fridge contained human brains. He was sentenced to the death penalty after a five month long trail. But, Richard ended up committing suicide before that took place, he overdosed on his anti-anxiety medication and was found dead in his cell the day after Christmas in 1980.