List of Famous Serial Killers

Christopher Scarver is an American convicted murderer best known for his fatal assault on serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer and Jesse Anderson at the Columbia Correctional Institution in 1994. Scarver used a 20-inch (51 cm) metal bar, which he had removed from a piece of exercise equipment in the prison weight room, to beat Dahmer and Anderson. Both Dahmer and Anderson later died from their injuries. Scarver was sentenced to two further life sentences for the killings.

Ronald Joseph DeFeo Jr. is an American mass murderer who was tried and convicted for the 1974 killings of his father, mother, two brothers, and two sisters in Amityville, Long Island, New York. The case inspired the book and film versions of The Amityville Horror.

Joran Andreas Petrus van der Sloot is a Dutch convicted murderer who killed Stephany Flores Ramírez in Lima, Peru, in 2010. He is also the prime suspect in the disappearance of Natalee Holloway in 2005.

Charles Edmund Cullen is an American serial killer who confessed to murdering up to 40 patients during the course of his 16-year career as a nurse in New Jersey. However, in subsequent interviews with police, psychiatrists, and journalists, it became apparent that he had killed many more, whom he could not specifically remember by name, though he could often remember details of their murders. Experts have estimated that Cullen may ultimately be responsible for 400 deaths, which would make him the most prolific serial killer in recorded history.

Michael Thomas Gargiulo is a convicted American serial killer and rapist. He moved to Southern California in the 1990s and has been nicknamed The Hollywood Ripper.

Paul Kenneth Bernardo, also known as Paul Jason Teale, is a Canadian serial killer and serial rapist. Bernardo is known for initially committing a series of rapes in Scarborough, Ontario, a suburb of Toronto, between 1987 and 1990. He subsequently committed three murders with his then-wife Karla Homolka; among these victims was her young sister Tammy Homolka. After his capture and conviction, Bernardo was sentenced to life imprisonment and was later declared a dangerous offender unlikely to be released.

Alexander Yuryevich Pichushkin, also known as The Chessboard Killer and The Bitsa Park Maniac, is a Russian serial killer. He is believed to have killed at least 48 people, and possibly as many as 60, between 1992 and 2006 in Southwest Moscow's Bitsa Park, where a number of the victims' bodies were found. In 2007 he was sentenced to life imprisonment.

Lonnie David Franklin Jr., better known by the nickname Grim Sleeper, was an American serial killer who was responsible for at least ten murders and one attempted murder in Los Angeles, California from 1985 to 2007. He was also convicted for rape and sexual violence. Franklin earned his nickname when he appeared to have taken a fourteen-year break from his crimes, from 1988 to 2002.

Jerome Henry "Jerry" Brudos was an American serial killer and necrophile who committed the murders of at least four women in Oregon between 1968 and 1969.

Gilles de Rais, Baron de Rais, was a knight and lord from Brittany, Anjou and Poitou, a leader in the French army, and a companion-in-arms of Joan of Arc. He is best known for his reputation and later conviction as a confessed serial killer of children.