List of Famous Serial Killers

Daniel Harold Rolling, also known as The Gainesville Ripper, was an American serial killer and singer who murdered five students in Gainesville, Florida, over four days in late August 1990. Rolling later confessed to raping several of his victims, committing a triple homicide in Shreveport, Louisiana, and attempting to murder his father in May 1990. In total, Rolling confessed to killing eight people. Rolling was sentenced to death for the five Gainesville murders in 1994. He was executed by lethal injection in 2006.

Lee Boyd Malvo, also known as John Lee Malvo, is a convicted murderer who, along with John Allen Muhammad, committed murders in connection with the Beltway sniper attacks in the Washington Metropolitan Area over a three-week period in October 2002. Malvo was aged 16–17 during the span of the shootings. Currently, he is serving multiple life sentences at Red Onion State Prison in Virginia, a supermax prison. Muhammad was executed in 2009.

The Axeman of New Orleans was an American serial killer active in New Orleans, Louisiana, from May 1918 to October 1919. Press reports during the height of public panic about the killings mentioned similar murders as early as 1911, but recent researchers have called these reports into question. The Axeman was never identified, and the murders remain unsolved. He mainly targeted Italian immigrants and Italian-Americans.

John Allen Muhammad was an American convicted murderer from Baton Rouge, Louisiana. He, along with his partner and accomplice Lee Boyd Malvo, a native of Kingston, Jamaica, carried out the D.C. sniper attacks of October 2002, killing 10 people. Muhammad and Malvo were arrested in connection with the attacks on October 24, 2002, following tips from alert citizens. Although the pair's actions were classified by the media as psychopathy attributable to serial killer characteristics, whether or not their psychopathy meets this classification or that of a spree killer is debated by researchers.

Gordon Stewart Northcott was a Canadian serial killer, child rapist, and child abductor.

Anthony Allen Shore was an American serial killer and child molester who was responsible for the murder of one woman and three girls. He was active from 1986 to 2000, and became known as the "Tourniquet Killer" because of his use of a ligature with either a toothbrush or bamboo stick to tighten or loosen the ligature. The instrument was similar to a twitch, a tool used by farmers to control horses. Shore was sentenced to death in 2004, and executed by lethal injection on January 18, 2018.

Tamara Mitrofanovna Samsonova, known as the "Granny Ripper" and "Baba Yaga", is a Russian serial killer who was arrested in July 2015 on suspicion of committing 2 murders with extreme cruelty. She supposedly suffers from schizophrenia and was previously hospitalized three times in psychiatric hospitals.

Gesche Margarethe Gottfried, born Gesche Margarethe Timm, was a serial killer who murdered 15 people by arsenic poisoning in Bremen and Hanover, Germany, between 1813 and 1827. She was the last person to be publicly executed in the city of Bremen.

Beverley Gail Allitt is an English serial child killer who was convicted of murdering four children, attempting to murder three other children, and causing grievous bodily harm to a further six. The crimes were committed over a period of 59 days from February to April 1991 in the children's ward at Grantham and Kesteven Hospital, Lincolnshire, where Allitt was employed as a State Enrolled Nurse. She is supposed to have administered large doses of insulin to at least two of her victims, and a large air bubble was found in the body of another, but police were unable to establish how all the attacks were carried out. In May 1993, at Nottingham Crown Court, she received thirteen life sentences for the crimes. Mr Justice Latham, sentencing, told Allitt that she was "a serious danger" to others and was unlikely ever to be considered safe enough to be released. She is detained at Rampton Secure Hospital in Nottinghamshire.

Alexander "Sawney" Bean was said to be the head of a 45-member clan in Scotland in the 16th century that murdered and cannibalized over 1,000 people in the span of 25 years. According to legend, Bean and his clan members would eventually be caught by a search party sent by King James VI, and were executed for their heinous crimes.