1. Carroll Cole (1938)

American Serial Killer

Serial killer executed in 1985 after claiming to have murdered at least 14 people.

2. Billy Gohl (1873)

American Serial Killer

Known as the Ghoul of Grays Harbor, he killed sailors while working as a Sailors' Union official in Washington state.

3. Carl Panzram (1891)

American Serial Killer

Serial killer and rapist who went by multiple aliases and confessed to killing 22 people in the 1920s.

4. Earle Nelson (1897)

American Serial Killer

Known as The Gorilla Killer, murdered at least 22 people, most of whom were landladies, in several states.

5. Nannie Doss (1905)

American Serial Killer

Serial killer known as The Giggling Nanny who confessed to murdering 11 people, all of whom were family members.

6. Benjamin Atkins (1968)

American Serial Killer

Known as the Woodward Corridor Killer, he killed 11 women in Detroit, MI in the early nineties.

7. Maury Travis (1965)

American Serial Killer

Killer believed to have murdered 2-20 women and killed himself in jail after being arrested.

8. Harvey Glatman (1927)

American Serial Killer

As The Lonely Hearts Killer, he targeted beautiful women by posing as a photographer who wanted to take their pictures.

9. Harvey Carignan (1927)

American Serial Killer

Serial killer known for raping and bludgeoning women to death with a hammer.

10. Dorothea Puente (1929)

American Serial Killer

Serial killer who robbed and murdered tenants in the boarding house she ran.

11. Velma Barfield (1932)

American Serial Killer

The first woman to be executed by lethal injection in the U.S., and the first woman to be executed after the 1976 resumption of the death penalty.

12. Dean Corll (1939)

American Serial Killer

Houston-based serial killer convicted of murdering at least twenty-eight boys between 1970 to 1973, along with accomplices David Brooks and Elmer Wayne Henley, Jr.

13. Jerry Brudos (1939)

American Serial Killer

Known as The Shoe Fetish Slayer, he bludgeoned and strangled four women, taking body parts as trophies.

14. Robert Hansen (1939)

American Serial Killer

Serial killer and rapist who brutally murdered at least 17 girls and women in Alaska.

15. Richard Biegenwald (1940)

American Serial Killer

Serial killer sentenced to death for murdering 5 people in New York and New Jersey.

16. Lemuel Smith (1941)

American Serial Killer

Serial killer sentenced to life in prison and is the first convict to kill an on-duty female corrections officer.

17. Charles Schmid (1942)

American Serial Killer

Serial killer known as the Pied Piper of Tucson who received a lot of press for killing at least three women, including his girlfriend and her sister.

18. Judy Buenoano (1943)

American Serial Killer

Executed for murdering her husband, and convicted of murdering her son and attempting to murder her fiance.

19. Wayne Williams (1958)

American Serial Killer

Convicted murderer believed to have committed most of the Atlanta Child Murders of 1979-1981.

20. Timothy Krajcir (1944)

American Serial Killer

Serial killer and rapist sentenced to 13 consecutive life terms for murdering nine women.

21. Altemio Sanchez (1958)

American Serial Killer

American serial killer known as the Bike Path Rapist who killed and raped women in upstate New York.

22. Dennis Rader (1945)

American Serial Killer

Infamous BTK Killer who was sentenced to life in prison for murdering 10 people between 1974 and 1991.

23. Waneta Hoyt (1946)

American Serial Killer

Confessed to killing 5 of her young children by suffocation.

24. Richard Cottingham (1946)

American Serial Killer

Known as The Torso Killer for often leaving behind nothing but the torsos of his victims.

25. Kendall Francois (1971)

American Serial Killer

Known as the Poughkeepsie Killer, convicted of murdering eight women from 1996-1998.

26. Dallen Bounds (1971)

American Serial Killer

Serial killer who murdered four people before barricading himself with two females and shooting himself in the head.

27. David Meirhofer (1949)

American Serial Killer

First serial killer to be caught using the FBI's "offender profiling" technique.

28. Robert Berdella (1949)

American Serial Killer

Serial killer who imprisoned, raped, and tortured at least six men in the 1980s.

29. Lorenzo Gilyard (1950)

American Serial Killer

Known as The Kansas City Strangler who raped and murdered 13 women and girls.

30. Genene Jones (1950)

American Serial Killer

Murdered between 11 and 46 infants and children while working as a pediatric nurse.

31. William Suff (1950)

American Serial Killer

Known as The Riverside Prostitute Killer, convicted of raping and killing 12 prostitutes.

32. Thomas Dillon (1950)

American Serial Killer

Serial killer who shot and killed five people over a three-year period.

33. Randall Woodfield (1950)

American Serial Killer

Known as The I-5 Killer for committing crimes along the I-5 corridor in the Pacific Northwest.

34. Milton Johnson (1950)

American Serial Killer

Known as The Weekend Murderer, suspected of killing at least 10 people in a Cook County murder spree.

35. Michael Madison (1977)

American Serial Killer

Ohio man who was arrested in connection with the murder of three women, whose bodies were found on his property. He was charged with a variety of crimes, including kidnapping,...

36. Larry Eyler (1952)

American Serial Killer

Known as The Highway Killer and confessed to murdering 21 people before dying of AIDS complications on death row.

37. Donald Harvey (1952)

American Serial Killer

Serial killer who murdered hospital patients and kept his crimes a secret for over 17 years.

38. Ottis Toole (1947)

American Serial Killer

Serial killer, and road partner of Henry Lee Lucas, who was convicted of six murders and believed to be the killer of Adam Walsh.

39. William Bonin (1947)

American Serial Killer

Known as the Freeway Killer, he raped, tortured, and killed at least 21 boys and men.

40. Herb Baumeister (1947)

American Serial Killer

Serial killer responsible for at least eleven (and possibly as many as twenty) murders. He did not stand trial for his crimes, as he killed himself shortly after police discovered...

41. Dean Carter (1955)

American Serial Killer

Serial killer who murdered five Southern California women in four days in 1984.

42. Anthony Sowell (1959)

American Serial Killer

Convicted serial killer who became known as the Cleveland Strangler.

43. Joel Rifkin (1959)

American Serial Killer

Known as Joel the Ripper, he murdered and dismembered at least nine women in New York.

44. Jeffrey Dahmer (1960)

American Serial Killer

Infamous serial killer and cannibal, convicted of seventeen murders.

45. Paul Durousseau (1970)

American Serial Killer

Serial killer who raped murdered at least 7 women between 1997 and 2003.

46. Efren Saldivar (1969)

American Serial Killer

Serial killer who murdered at least six people while working as a respiratory therapist.

47. Cary Stayner (1961)

American Serial Killer

Sentenced to death for the murder of four women he met while working at a motel in California.

48. Ronald Dominique (1964)

American Serial Killer

Serial killer who confessed to raping and murdering 23 men over a ten-year period.

49. Elmer Wayne Henley (1956)

American Serial Killer

Elmer Wayne Henley Jr. is a convicted American serial killer incarcerated in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice system. Henley was convicted in 1974 for his role in a...

50. H. H. Holmes (1861)

American Serial Killer

Herman Webster Mudgett better known under the name of Dr. Henry Howard Holmes was one of the first documented American serial killers in the modern sense of the term. In...