41 Dangerous Serial Killers With Nicknames

Nickname: The Grim Sleeper

Franklin killed women in South Central Los Angeles. He then vanished for 13 years, earning the nickname "The Grim Sleeper." Police tracked him down using DNA technology that did not exist when he began his killings. He started these acts again.

He wasfound guiltyHe was found guilty of 10 slayings in 2016, and he is a suspect in at least 20 more.

Nicknames: Son of Sam, the .44 Caliber Killer

David BerkowitzBerkowitz carried out shootings in the summer of 1976. He used a .44 caliber Bulldog revolver. He shot six people until they passed and wounded seven others. Berkowitz sent taunting letters to police and the press, promising more shootings, and terrified New York City.

Berkowitz was captured in August 1977. He confessed everything. The court sentenced him to 25 years to life in prison for each life he took, served consecutively, and he will likely never be released.

Nickname:The Green River Killer

Ridgway slayed many. He was arrested in 2001 for killing four people. He confessed to slaying at least 70 women in Washington State during the 1980s and 1990s.

He avoided the death penalty by giving detailed confessions. He led police to the dumping sites of his victims. He dumped five victims in the Green River, leading the press to give him his nickname. He was convicted of 49 slayings and sentenced to life imprisonment without parole.

Nickname:Bind, Torture, Kill (BTK)

Dennis RaiderRaider slayed 10 people in Wichita, Kansas, from 1974 to 1991. Obsessed with fame, Raider sent taunting letters to police under his nickname. He stalked victims, broke into homes, bound limbs, and strangled them.

After vanishing in 1988,BTKHe reemerged in 2005. He sent a floppy disc to the press, which caused his downfall. Tracing him through the disc, Rader was arrested, charged, and confessed right away. He serves 10 life sentences consecutively, with a possible release date of February 26, 2180.

Nickname:Night Stalker

Ricardo Leyva "Richard" Muñoz Ramírez was an American killer and Satan worshipper. He terrorized Los Angeles from 1984 to 1985. Ramirez broke into victims' homes, shooting, stabbing, forcing himself on, and mutilating them. His victims included a 9-year-old girl and a married couple in their late 60s. Ramirez smeared pentagrams on the walls during these incidents.

Captured in 1985, Ramirez received the death penalty. He remained on California's death row for 23 years until he died in his cell(of cancer)in June 2013.

Nicknames: Muswell Hill Murderer, Kindly Killer

The British version of Jeffrey Dahmer, NilsenDennis Nilsen, a gay killer, murdered 15 queer men in his London, England home from 1978 to 1983. He kept the victims’ bodies before dissecting them and burned or flushed the remains.

Nilsen faced a 1983 conviction for six murders and two attempted murders. He received a life sentence. Nilsen died in prison in 2018 at72.

Nickname: Lady Killer

One of the most known killers of the 20th century, Ted BundyBundy, an American, snatched or overpowered many young women and girls in the 1970s. He forced himself on them and killed them. Bundy usually approached female victims in public, leading them to private spots where he assaulted and killed. He cut off the heads of at least 12 victims and kept the heads in his apartment as trophies.

Repeatedly caught, he escaped police and court houses twice before committing three more killings. Convicted of multiple murders, he faced the death penalty in 1980. The electric chair took him in 1989.

Nickname: The Butcher of Rostov

Chikatilo, a Soviet killer, killed or sexually assaulted at least 52 women and children in Russia from 1978 to 1990. Believing he was the killer, police watched Chikatilo.Chikatilo, which gave police enough reason to arrest him.

He admitted to 56 killings and was tried for 53 in April 1992. Victims' relatives asked authorities to let him go so they could end him. However, he was convicted and sentenced to death for 52 killings in October 1992. A firing squad executed him in February 1994.

Nickname: The Butcher from Hanover

Fritz Haarmann, a man who looked unassuming and sympathetic, used his friendly way to act as both a police informant and a sexual sadist. Over six years, he murdered at least 24 vagrants and male harlots—slayings he saw as an act of love.HaarmanHaarman claimed he only wanted to bring peace to his victims andhe had a strong preference for handsome boys.

The discarded skulls of his victims washed up on the Leine River shore in Germany. In 1925, while in prison awaiting execution, he saw a photo of a missing boy the police thought Haarmann killed. Looking at the ugly boy’s picture, he dismissed the idea of killing such an unattractive kid.

Nickname: The Cannibal Killer

Beginning in 1976, Metheny, age 21, killed victims and buried bodies. He sometimes stripped them for meat, claiming he used it at his roadside open-pit food stand. The Cannibal Killer viewed victims as meat, stating people could not tell the difference between human meat and the pork he mixed it with.

Police caught Metheny in 1996. Later, he received a death sentence for killing three women (though he confessed to stabbing or strangling four women and three men). A court overturned this, changing the sentence to life imprisonment in 2000. He perished in prison in 2017.Metheny perished in prison in 2017.He died at age 62.

Nickname: Doctor Death

Dr. Harold Fredrick Shipman was an English doctor. He became one of history's most prolific killers, responsible for up to 250 murders. His community respected him as a trusted doctor. However, colleagues and local undertakers grew worried about the high death rate and the many cremation forms for elderly women he signed. Later, bodies were exhumed, and post-mortems showed diamorphine in their systems.

Shipman purposely injected fatal drug doses into many patients, causing their deaths. He forged wills to inherit money and completed cremation requests to destroy bodies. A judge sentenced Shipman to 15 life sentences and recommended he never leave. Shipman hanged himself in January 2004 in his cell atWakefield Prison.

Nickname: The Milwaukee Cannibal

Dahmer was an American killer and sex offender. He forced himself on, killed, and dismembered 17 men and boys between 1978 and 1991. Dahmer also committed necrophilia and ate parts of later victims, cooking and dismembering their bodies at his home.

Dahmer wascaughtA would-be victim overpowered him and alerted police. In 1992, Dahmer was convicted of 15 incidents and received 15 life sentences. Two years into his sentence, a fellow inmate beat him unconscious at the Columbia Correctional Institution.

Nickname: Monster of the Andes

Pedro Lopez, one of history's scariest men, forced himself on and killed hundreds of women in Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru. Police caught him in 1980; he served only 14 years in an Ecuadorian prison. After release, he spent three years in a mental hospital in Colombia. A 1998 ruling declared him sane, and he was released on$50 bail.

Lopez is free now and police suspect he committed more murders in Colombia. His location remains unknown.

Nickname: The Sadistic Aristocrat

Gilles de RaisGilles de Rais slayed up to 600 people. Historical records are unreliable; we cannot prove his corpse count. De Rais was a rich, powerful 15th-century French nobleman. He fought alongside Joan of Arc. He had a sick obsession with young boys. He picked victims who looked like him as a child. He lured blond, blue-eyed peasant boys to his home. There, he and a few helpers forced them, tortured them, and mutilated them.

In 1440, the ecclesiastical court in Nantes hanged de Rais and burned his body.

Nickname: The Co-Ed Killer

Edmund KemperEdmund Kemper, an American slayer and necrophile, carried out brutal actions in California during the 1970s. At fifteen, he killed his grandparents. He then slayed and dismembered six female hitchhikers near Santa Cruz. Kemper also killed his mother and a friend before turning himself in days later.

The court found Kemper guilty on eight counts in November 1973. He asked to pass by the government. Instead, he received life imprisonment without parole.

Nickname: Killer of 100 Boys

Javed Iqbal came from Punjab, Pakistan. He became one of history's most hated men. Iqbal sought out young boys constantly. He opened video arcades, schools, aquariums, and gyms. Arrested multiple times for sodomy, his father’s money often cleared him. In his confession, he claimed to kill 100 boys in five months. He drugged, forced, and strangled them, then chopped them up. Iqbal kept the bodies in an acid vat near his house or dumped them in the sewer.

When the judge sentenced Iqbal to capital punishment in 2000, people suggested he be killed like his victims. Official reports say he took his own life in prison. An autopsy suggested he might have been killed. This did not affect his family; they refused to collect his remains, claiming he died the day he confessed.

Nickname: Colonel, The Killer Clown

Gacy Gacy sexually assaulted and killed 33 teenage boys and young men in Chicago, Illinois, between 1972 and 1978. He lured victims to his home with promises of work or money. Gacy killed them by strangulation with a tourniquet. Gacy buried 26 victims in the crawl space under his home. He disposed of later victims in the Des Plaines River.

ConvictedGacy received a capital sentence in 1980 for 33 slayings. He served 14 years before lethal injection killed him on May 10, 1994.

Nickname:The Bloody Lady of Cachtice

A sadistic 16th-century countess, BathoryElizabeth Báthory remains Hungary and Slovakia's most infamous killer. Within her Hungarian castle, Báthory acted with total freedom. She tricked peasant girls into working as maids and lured noble daughters with etiquette lessons. Báthory caught her victims under false claims. With a few helpers, Báthory starved, froze, and tortured her victims. The Bloody Lady killed many—estimates range from 36 to 200.

The government killed most of Báthory’s accomplices. Báthory’s wealth and power gave her the 16th-century equivalent of house arrest: imprisonment in her own castle.

Nickname: Genesee River Killer

Shawcross killed first in 1972. He sexually assaulted and claimed a 10-year-old boy after luring him into a wooded area in Watertown, New York. Shawcross then forced himself on and killed an 8-year-old girl. He faced capture and conviction formanslaughter. After serving 14 years, Shawcross left prison in 1988. He then brutally killed 12 female harlots aged 22 to 59.

Shawcross confessed to all 12 slayings after being captured at the last scene. He received a 250-year sentence, but he died of cardiac arrest in prison in 2008.

Nickname: Coast to Coast, The Cross-Country Killer

Tommy Lynn Sells claims he killed at least 70 people. Tommy Lynn Sells is one of Texas's most dangerous men. He was convicted for brutal slayings between 1985 and 1999. These acts included stabbing a 13-year-old girl sixteen times.

Sells was captured after breaking into a 10-year-old girl's bedroom and stabbing her, letting her die. The girl survived her injuries and alerted neighbors. She gave police a detailed description of Sells, leading to his capture. Sells received a sentence of andcapital punishment in Texasin 2014.

Nickname: Angel of Death

Norwegian slayer Arnfinn Nesset Nesset worked as a nurse. He killed 22 people and tried to kill more. During the '80s, Nesset poisoned patients with a muscle relaxer. Norwegian law allowed a maximum of 21 years in prison; he served only 12 years. He got parole, which has since expired.

Nickname: Pedrinho Matador (Killer Petey)

Pedro Rodrigues Filhois a Brazilian man who killed many.Arrested in 1973, Pedro Rodrigues Filho was convicted in 2003 of killing at least 71 people and sentenced to 128 years. He began a series of burglaries at age 14 and attacked local drug dealers seeking revenge for his girlfriend's death by inmates while he was in prison.

Pedro Rodrigues Filho killed 10 people by age 18. While in jail, he killed his own father, who was also serving time for murder. He killed at least 47 inmates while imprisoned. Initially sentenced to 30 years, his crimes led to new convictions, raising his sentence to 400 years.

Donald Henry Gaskins' nickname is PeeWee.: PeeWee

In 1969, Gaskins started killing hitchhikers he picked up on coastal highways in the American South, torturing and mutilating them. He claimed he killed 80 to 90 people. Police arrested him in 1975 after an associate told the police he saw Gaskins kill two young men.

GaskinsA court convicted Gaskins of eight killings and sentenced him to death. The sentence later changed to life imprisonment without parole. Gaskins committed one more killing inside the high-security prison, this time against another inmate.

Nickname: Acid Bath Murderer

John George HaighAn English man, John George Haigh, was convicted of killing six people, though he claimed nine. This professional conman targeted rich people, fooling them into thinking he was a successful businessman. He led victims to a rundown warehouse, shot them, dissolved their bodies in sulfuric acid, and forged papers to sell their things and take their savings.

Authorities found human remains and had enough proof to convict him. In 1949, he received a sentence of hanging at Wandsworth Prison in London.

Nickname: The Ziębice Cannibal

Everyone knew and seemed to likeKarl DenkeAt first, people liked him. He was a good Christian and earned money selling various goods door to door. People held him in high regard, calling him Papa Denke. But in December 1924, a man showed up at the police station claiming Denke had attacked him with an axe. Police first found this unbelievable, but Denke was arrested and jailed.

As police searched his home, he took his own life. This should have been the first clue to Ziebice Cannibal’s killing history. The body count, mostly beggars and workers Denke let stay, reached 20 to 40.

Nickname: Barbie

Karla Homolka was half of the murderous couple that scared people in Canada. Homolka, with her husband Paul Bernardo, forced and killed many women, including her own sister.

When the couple appeared in 1993, Homolka gave evidence against her husband for a lighter sentence. She was released in 2005after serving only 12 years in prison.

Nickname: Beast of Birkenshaw

This American-born Scottish man killed nine people in southern Scotland from 1956 to 1958. Manuel might have killed eighteen people. Police proved his guilt only at his last killings. Stolen banknotes Manuel used for drinks in Glasgow pubs proved the link.

Manuel confessed after his mother confronted him at the police station. Manuel was hanged at Glasgow’s Barlinnie Prison in July 1958. He was one of the last prisoners hanged in Scotland before capital punishment ended.

Nickname: Metal Fang

Cannibal Nikolai Dzhumagaliev slayed and ate the remains of at least seven women in the Soviet Union. He got this nickname after replacing his real teeth with white, metal ones.

Dzhumagaliev Police caught Dzhumagaliev in 1980. He escaped in 1989. He was caught again and released after ten years of mental evaluation.

Nickname: The Florida Sex Beast

As a boy, Gerard JohnSchaefer enjoyed torturing animals until they could not breathe. He also wore women's underwear and peeped through windows. Despite these strange childhood acts, Schaefer became a Florida cop. While on patrol, Schaefer used his badge to abduct two teenage girls. They escaped before he could attack and kill them. Claiming he wanted to stop them from hitchhiking, he called his sergeant, saying he had done “something foolish.”

SchaeferSchaefer was fired and arrested. While on bail, he sexually assaulted and killed two other teenage girls. Police connected the two events, and Schaefer received two life sentences.

Nickname: The Yorkshire Ripper

Peter William Sutcliffe, a British man, was convicted in 1981 for killing 13 women and trying to kill seven others. He targeted harlots in Leeds and Bradford, creating fear across northern England. Police questioned him about the women when they arrested him in January 1981 for driving with false license plates, and he confessed.

At his trial, Sutcliffe pleaded not guilty to murder due to diminished responsibility, but the jury rejected his defense. He received a life sentence without parole and stays at Broadmoor Maximum Security Mental Hospital today.

Nickname: British Bad Seed

When Mary Bell was only 11, she killed two young boys separately by strangling them and cutting one with scissors. She was convicted of manslaughter in 1968. Twelve years later, at age 23, Bell was released and changed her name to start fresh.

She got a court order protecting her identity and her daughter's—a protection for convicts now called a "Mary Bell Order."

Nickname: The Pious Poisoner

Jegado was a domestic servantIn 19th century France, Hélène Jégado did not give many people chances to apologize if they angered her. From 1833 to 1841, at least 36 people, mostly employers or boarders, died from arsenic poisoning. Authorities routinely ruled her out as a suspect because of her devout and sincere nature.

In 1851, Jegado was arrested and convicted of at least three slayings after she hastily claimed innocence without being accused. A year later, she wasGuillotine executed Hélène Jégado.

Nickname: The Hammerman

In South Africa, Louis Van SchoorHe salyed at least seven men he claimed were burglars. Officials cleared him of each incident without a caution. However, they finally discovered him in 1992.

After serving 12 years, he was released in 2004.

Nickname: The Tool Box Killers

Lawrence Bittaker and Roy Norris, two Americans, killed five young women in California in 1979. They lured victims into their van, drove them to remote spots, and brutally sexually assaulted and tortured them with tools before killing them.

In 1981, Bittaker and Norris faced charges for slaying, abducting, and assault. Bittaker received a death sentence and remains on death row today. Norris avoided the death penalty because he testified against Bittaker and received a sentence ofServed 45 years in prison..

Nickname: St. Valentine's Beast

Italian slayer Bartolomeo Gagliano killed at least three harlots in the late '80s. He got eight years in an asylum for killing two victims, but he escaped with a fellow inmate to kill two harlots on Valentine's Day, 1989. He claimed he targeted people who spread the HIV virus.

In December 2013, Gagliano escaped prison again in Genoa, Italy, while on day release. Police arrested him a few days later in France. HeTook his own life.In 2015.

Nickname: Moors Murders

Ian Brady and Myra Hindley killed five children between 1963 and 1965 in Greater Manchester, England. The acts were called the Moors Murders. Their victims, aged 10 to 17, were sexually assaulted before being brutally killed. Three victims were found in graves dug on Saddleworth Moor, and the last victim's body was found at Brady’s house. The location of the fourth victim, Keith Bennett, remains unknown.

Brady and Hindley both later received life sentences. Hindley died in prison in 2002. Brady stays in the maximum security Ashworth Hospital.

Nickname: The Hillside Stranglers

Between late 1977 and early 1978, cousins Kenneth Bianchi and Angelo Buono terrorized California. They abducted, assaulted, and killed 10 girls aged 12 to 28 in the hills above Los Angeles, strangling each victim in the hills, which led to their nickname.

Bianchi tried to claim insanity but faked his mental illness. Instead, he agreed to plead guilty and testify against Buono. Both men received life sentences. Buono died of a heart attack in his cell in 2002. Bianchi remainsKenneth Bianchi And Angelo Buono were imprisoned.in Washington state.

Nickname: Baseline Killer

He was a Swedish man.Nikita Fouganthine (born Jua Veikko Valjakkala) killed three people in 1988. Police caught him shortly after and convicted him. Fouganthine got a life sentence in a Finnish prison but escaped in 1994. During his short freedom, he held a teacher hostage, but police caught him quickly.

He escaped and was caught three more times in 2002, 2004, and 2006. In 2011, FouganthineHe escaped from prison..

Nickname: He was The Vampire of Sacramento.

Camargo was Colombian. He allegedly assaulted and killed over 150 young girls in Colombia and Ecuador during the 1970s and 1980s. He calmly confessed to killing 71 girls in Ecuador after escaping a Colombian prison. He guided authorities to the dumping sites of victims whose bodies had not yet surfaced. After sexually assaulting them, he hacked the girls with a machete.

He was convicted in 1989 and got 16 years in prison, the maximum sentence in Ecuador. In November 1994, he wasHe was slain in prison.The cousin of one of his victims killed him.

Nickname: Ma Baker

Between 1967 and 1987, Fred West and his wife Rose tortured, assaulted, and killedHe was at least 11.young women and girls. The incidents often happened at their home, 25 Cromwell Street in Gloucester, later called the House of Horrors. Rose got her nickname because she was making a cookbook when the murders started.

Police caught the couple and charged them in 1994 after they found human bones in the garden and under the floorboards. During his trial, Fred West hanged himself in his cell before being convicted. In 1995, Rose West was jailed for life after being found guilty on 10 counts.

Nickname: Cricket

A Chinese-American, Charles Ng, allegedly assaulted, tortured, and murdered between 11 and 25 victims with his partner Leonard Lake at Lake’s ranch in Calaveras County, California. They filmed themselves torturing their victims. Lake killed himself after being arrested, and Ng was caught shoplifting at a hardware store in 1985.

Police searched Lake’s ranch and found human remains. They identified Ng as Lake’s partner. Ng tried to avoid police by running to Canada. After a long extradition to the United States, he faced trial in 1998 on 12 counts and was convicted in 1999. Ng is currentlywaiting for the death penaltyHe died at San Quentin State Prison in California.