15 Serial Killers Most True Crime Fans Have Never Heard Of

Donald Gaskins drove a hearse with a bumper sticker reading 'I Haul Dead Bodies,' and this story is true. He was born in 1933.Donald "Pee Wee" Gaskins.Gaskins was born in 1933. He earned the title "meanest man in America." Gaskins dropped out of school at age 11. At that age, he began breaking into homes, robbing them, hiring sex workers, and sexually violating other children.

At thirteen, Gaskins attacked a girl while trying to break into her home. A juvenile detention center sent him. He left at eighteen, but prison quickly sent him for attempted murder. Inside, Gaskins killed another inmate to earn respect from his peers.

Over the years, Gaskins escaped prison or got released. He then committed more robberies, rapes, and murders. Gaskins tortured victims for days. He often cannibalized them while they lived, forcing them to watch him eat body parts and making them eat their own.

Gaskins violated, tortured, and killed people for six years. A jury convicted him of nine murders, but he confessed to over 100. The jury gave him the death penalty. Before execution, Gaskins tried to kill himself so the state could not execute him. His plan failed. At 56, Gaskins was executed by electric chair in 1991.

In the mid-1970s, killers targeted gay men. These men were killed, and their bodies were left in trash bags along California highways. The man responsible wasPatrick Kearney.Kearney was an electronics engineer with an IQ of 180. Kearney lured young boys and men aged 5 to 28. He killed them, assaulted them, dismembered their bodies, and wrapped them in garbage bags before dumping them on freeway sides.

Police connected Kearney to the crimes after someone reported seeing him with a recent victim before they disappeared. Police linked Kearney to two murders, though they thought more existed.

Police offered Kearney a deal. If he confessed to all the murders, he avoided the death sentence. Kearney first confessed to 18 murders, but the count grew. The final count reached 32; Police confirmed 21 of those. Some police believe Kearney killed up to 43 people.

Some people do not believe Kearney committed these acts. Kearney lived with his partner,David Hill.Hill was also suspected in the murders. Some people think Hill was the killer, but Kearney took the blame for his crimes.

Kearney confessed to the murders and cleared Hill. Kearney got a life sentence and serves time in a California prison.

Danny Rolling.Rolling became known as the “Gainesville Ripper.” He raped and/or murdered eight people between 1989 and 1990. Five victims were college students. He mutilated his victims, even decapitating one, then posed their remains lewdly.

Police arrested Rolling for burglary. They linked him to the five college students' murders by matching his tools to the killings.

Rolling admitted he committed the crimes to become a famous serial killer like Ted Bundy. Rolling also confessed to an 1989 triple murder in Shreveport, LA, pushing his body count from five to eight.

Rolling pleaded guilty in his trial. He received several death sentences. Florida State Prison executed him on October 25, 2006.

John Edward Robinson was the internet's first serial killer.J.R. Robinson was first arrested in 1969 at age 26. Authorities found he forged documents and certificates to get an X-ray technician job. He stole $33,000 while working at a doctor's office, leading to his arrest.

After jail, Robinson kept making fake documents and stealing. Starting in 1993, he met victims online pretending to run businesses. He offered them secretarial jobs; once each woman moved to Kansas, he murdered her.

Robinson killed a woman who had a four-month-old daughter. Knowing his brother and sister-in-law sought to adopt a child, Robinson forged adoption papers for the infant. He then gave the child to his brother for money. The child was fifteen when she and her adoptive parents found out about her biological mother's murder and her own illegal adoption.

Robinson used the online name “the Slave Master” to meet women interested in S&M. He brought these women to his home and murdered them.

Robinson's killing ended in 2000. Police arrested him for sexual battery and theft. Police searched his property and found decaying bodies in large barrels. Robinson confessed to eight murders, but police think the actual number is much higher. Robinson received a death sentence and remains on death row in Kansas.

WhenAdolfo ConstanzoAdolfo Constanzo was a baby. He was a Haitian priest who practiced Palo Mayombe, an Afro-Cuban religion that often uses animal and human remains in rituals. His mother blessed him at her request. Constanzo's mother thought he was "the chosen one" and a natural-born leader.

Constanzo practiced Palo Mayombe as a teen. He moved from Miami, FL, to Mexico City, where he offered services to the community. Constanzo gained followers by claiming he could make people invisible and possessed psychic powers. He used these powers to help local drug dealers choose safe delivery times. He then began killing people to use their body parts for his rituals.

Two years passed before police named Constanzo a serial killer. They linked him to 23 ritualistic murders with cult members, including Sara Aldrete.

In 1989, Mark Kilroy, a University of Texas pre-med student, was abducted during Spring Break in Mexico. Constanzo brought Kilroy to his house and killed him to use his "extraordinary brain" for rituals.

Constanzo knew the police sought him. He fled to another city. Police searched his property and found 15 mutilated bodies, including Kilroy's, buried there. They also found a cauldron in the home holding Kilroy's brain and a dead cat.

Police called to Constanzo's apartment for an unrelated incident. Believing the police knew him, Constanzo started shooting. Police rushed the apartment, but Constanzo was already dead. He ordered a crew member to shoot him because he did not want jail.

Sara Aldrete, who was in the apartment, later went to prison for her part in the killings.

In 2008, Los Angeles police connected a homicide victim to other unsolved murders from the 1980s. Authorities struggled to find a serial killer who vanished 25 years prior and started killing again. The media started calling the killer the "" Grim Sleeper" due to his long break between murders.

DNA testing helped police identify and arrest a 57-year-old Lonnie Franklin Jr. returned to murder after 25 years, appearing in the list '15 Serial Killers Most True Crime Fans Have Never Heard Of'.. for at least 10 of the Grim Sleeper murders. Franklin's neighbors were shocked; he seemed well-known and liked by everyone. Franklin was married and had children.

Franklin never admitted to the crimes. We do not know if he took a 25-year break from serial murder, or if police just did not know about more killings.

Much controversy surrounds the victims: all were Black, and most were sex workers. Many criticized the Los Angeles Police Department, feeling authorities should have pursued the killer harder if the victims were not Black or sex workers.

Franklin died in his prison cell in 2020 at age 67.

Between 1977 and 1980, Joseph Paul Franklin was active.Joseph Paul Franklin is on the list '15 Serial Killers Most True Crime Fans Have Never Heard Of'.Franklin shot and killed at least 22 people. He specifically targeted interracial couples to start a race war. He also killed Joseph Paul Franklin was a hustler.magazine publisher Larry Flynt, which left him paralyzed, and civil rights activist Vernon Jordan, who survived the injuries.

Franklin never shared his total victim count, leaving investigators to guess he killed more than he admitted. His actual number of victims remains unknown because Franklin was executed in 2013 while serving his death sentence in Missouri.

Mid-1970s, murders and sexual assaults hit Los Angeles. Elderly women suffered sexual violation and strangulation. Police could not identify the 17 victims, but they saw a pattern: pillows placed over the victims' faces. The suspect became known as the Westside Rapist.

Ten years passed before these killings started again. This time, they happened in Claremont, CA, thirty minutes from Los Angeles. Attackers assaulted and strangled the victims, placing a pillow over their faces. This second wave took at least five elderly victims.

In 2009, DNA testing allowed police to link at least seven victims to a 72-year-old.John Floyd Thomas JrBased on his methods, police think Thomas killed at least 15 other people. Thomas pleaded guilty to seven murders to avoid the death penalty. In 2011, he received a life without parole sentence.

From 1990 to 1998, a serial killer targeted sex workers in Spokane, WA. The killer murdered women, leaving them dead from gunshot wounds with plastic bags over their heads.

In 1998, a man attacked and shot a sex worker named Christine Smith. Smith escaped and reported the man and his vehicle to the police. Smith described both the man and his car in detail.

Weeks later, police pulled over a man matching Smith's description of her attacker. The police asked the man for a DNA sample.Robert Lee YatesHe refused the DNA sample. Yates claimed he was a family man and their request was ridiculous for someone like him. Police had no choice but to let him go.

Nearly two years later, police got the evidence they needed. They obtained a search warrant for a car belonging to Yates. Evidence from the vehicle linked Yates to one murder, leading to his arrest. He faced 14 murder counts initially, but investigators found two more victims.

Yates, age 48, did not fit the serial killer image. He was a married father of five and a decorated war veteran. Washington State Penitentiary serves Yates a death sentence; he worked there as a correctional officer.

In the late 1990s, police found young men's bodies in southeast Louisiana sugarcane fields and bayous. Many victims were unhoused drug users and sex workers who suffered sexual assault and strangulation. Police soon recognized a serial killer; the media called him “the Bayou Strangler.”

After police got a tip about a 42-year-oldRonald Dominiquefrom Houma, LA, might have been involved in the killings. Police gathered evidence against him, linking him to the assault and murder of two men. Dominique was arrested and confessed to police that he killed 23 men after sexually assaulting them.

Dominique agreed to a plea deal in 2008, admitting guilt to avoid the death penalty. He received eight life sentences, which he now serves in Louisiana State Penitentiary.

People who knew Richard Cottingham saw him as a family man. He was a husband and father to three kids. Cottingham worked for Blue Cross for 13 years; he seemed like a typical, working-class man. Cottingham eventually became known as the "Torso Killer” after the public learned in 1980 that he killed people by dismembering them, leaving only their torsos.

Police caught Cottingham and linked him to six murders, but Cottingham claimed the number was closer to 90. He serves a 173- to 197-year sentence in a New Jersey prison.

In 2022, Cottingham faced charges for the 1968 murder of Diane Cusick, which police believe is the oldest murder case prosecuted using DNA testing.

In 2003, 47-year-oldWilliam Devin HowellWilliam Devin Howell, also called the “Sick Ripper,” drove his van, calling it the "murder mobile," searching randomly for people to kill. He killed at least seven people and sexually assaulted the women he kidnapped. Howell kept one victim in his murder mobile for weeks, sleeping beside her and calling her his "baby."

Some of Howell's victims' bodies surfaced behind a strip mall in New Britain, CT. Police found more over 10 years later during a second search. Howell agreed to plead guilty to six murders and received a sentence of360 years.

WhenRory Conde was 21, he met and married 15-year-old Carla Conde, and they had two children. Conde then secretly started meeting sex workers. After years of sneaking out, Carla discovered her husband was cheating. Carla left him and took the children.

Soon after his wife left, Conde started killing sex workers. In 1994, Conde picked up a sex worker named Lazaro Comesana on the Tamiami Trail in Little Havana. Conde first did not know Comesana was male. After learning this, Conde reportedly became angry and strangled Comesana to death. He later threw the body in a public area where Comesana was quickly found.

For four months, Conde kept meeting and killing five other sex workers. Police eventually caught him, and DNA evidence connected him to all his murders.

Conde admitted his crimes. He said his actions came from anger because his wife left him to seek sex workers. He serves several life sentences in Florida.

In 2012, 66-year-oldSalvatore PerroneSalvatore Perrone murdered three men over five months. These three victims were shopkeepers in Brooklyn, NY, and all were of Middle Eastern descent. Police found surveillance video showing Perrone carrying a duffel bag after one crime. The media started calling the unknown attacker "John Doe Duffel Bags."

Police caught Perrone and found the duffel bag. It held a shotgun and a bloody knife. Even with the surveillance footage and the kill kit, Perrone claimed innocence during his trial.

Perrone's reason for killing remains unclear. He claims another Middle Eastern man committed the murders and set him up. The court found Perrone guilty of all three murders and gave him a life sentence. Perrone now sits in a New York prison.

Police arrested Anthony Sowell in 2009 after finding 11 women's bodies in his home. Sowell earned the nickname "Cleveland Strangler" because all his victims died by strangulation. Three years after Sowell's arrest, a new serial killer in the city began killing women using the same method, seeming inspired by Sowell's acts.

Michael Madison is listed in '15 Serial Killers Most True Crime Fans Have Never Heard Of'.Michael Madison lured victims to his apartment. He strangled them, put their bodies in trash bags, and dumped them in random spots around his building: bushes, the garage, and the basement of a nearby abandoned building.

The 35-year-old was arrested after the bodies appeared mutilated. He got a death sentence and now lives on death row at Ohio'sMichael Madison is associated with Chillicothe Correctional Institution..

Anthony Sowell is mentioned.Sowell remained on death row at that prison until he died from a terminal illness in 2021.