50 Creepy and Unsettling Facts about Serial Killers

Serial killer Pedro López killed over 300 girls and was released on $50 bail in 1998. He is currently free.

27. The real-life Pa from The Little House on the Prairie is suspected, by his daughter, to have killed a family of serial killers (Bloody Benders).

28. Two cousins, Kenneth Bianchi and Angelo Buono Jr. kidnapped, raped, tortured and murdered 10 women and dumped their naked bodies on the hillsides of Los Angeles. While actively murdering women, Kenneth Bianchi was also applying to join the ranks of the Los Angeles Police Department. He also attended several ride-alongs with police officers who were searching for the Hillside Strangler. One time, the duo posed as undercover police officers and stopped a female driver. They however dropped their plan to abduct and murder her after learning that she was the daughter of actor Peter Lorre, who was known for playing disturbed characters.

29. Wyatt Earp may have descended from America's first serial killers, the Harpe Brothers. He murdered up to 40 people and even bashed an infant against a tree for crying. One was beheaded and his head was left on a spike. That area is still known in Kentucky as "Harpe's Head'.

30. A serial killer named the Doodler, who targeted gay men in 1970's San Francisco would sketch his victims nude before murdering them. Though 3 victims survived, and a suspect was identified, none were willing to "out" themselves in open court in order to convict the suspect.

Christman Genipperteinga was a 16th-century German serial killer who is reported to have murdered 964 individuals. This included 6 of his newborn babies he had birthed from a sex slave he held captive for 7 years. One find day, she convinced him to let her go to the town where she betrayed him by dropping peas for the town's men to follow and capture him.

32. Joseph Briggen was Californian hog farmer who always had blue ribbon prize pigs at the state fair and his pigs always drew the highest prices at auction. When asked about his success, he often boasted, "it's all in the feeding". It turned out he had been killing the ranch hands and grinding their bodies up for hog feed. One of his ranch hands found some body parts and reported him to the police.

33. Israel Keyes was a serial killer who would travel via plane from Alaska to the continental U.S. to bury murder kits. He would return years later to retrieve them and kill at random. He had no victim profile.

34. During serial killer Carl Panzram's execution, when asked if he had any last words, he said, "Yes, hurry it up, you Hoosier b*stard! I could kill 10 men while you're fooling around!"

35. Albert Fish was a serial killer, rapist, child molester, and cannibal who killed at least three children in the 1920s. He had children of his own, and was by all accounts a very kind and gentle father, and never even raised a hand on his own kids. After he cooked and ate one of his victims, he sent a letter to her parents about what she tasted like. During his trial, one psychiatrist described him as “the most deranged human being". He had the habit of sticking needles into his pelvis while masturbating and sometimes they went deep enough to get stuck. When he told this to the police, they didn't believe him until they saw an x-ray of the needles still embedded in his pelvis. He also helped the executioner position the electrodes on his body before uttering his final words, “I don't even know why I'm here.” It took two jolts to kill him.

Spain's first documented serial killer, Manuel Romasanta, was raised a girl till he was 6 because his parents thought he was a female.

37. One of the most, if not the most prolific serial killers in American history continued getting work as a nurse (Charles Cullen) from 1988 - 2003 due to a national nurse shortage even with an extensive history of attempted suicide, documented mental instability and accused patient misconduct.

38. British doctor Harold Shipman (also known as 'Doctor Death') was proven to have murdered at least 250 of his patients but may have killed as many as 459 people, making him one of the most prolific serial killer in recorded human history.

39. Serial killer Edmund Kemper said to one of his victims he was sorry for accidentally touching her breast, a few minutes before killing her.

40. Serial killer Jake Bird placed a "Bird Hex" on those attending/working his court trial, claiming "Mark my words, you will die before I do." Six people following the case died.

In 1996, the infamous serial killer 'The Yorkshire Ripper' (Peter Sutcliffe) was almost strangled to death in custody, before being saved by serial killer Kenneth Erskine aka 'The Stockwell Strangler'.

42. The most prolific female serial killer in history, Elizabeth Bathory, sexually abused, tortured and killed over 600 young women.

43. A serial killer (Luis Garavito) responsible for the murder of more than 135 children will be released from prison no later than 2021, possibly sooner with "good behavior".

44. Serial killer Robert Pickton fashioned a dildo to the barrel of a .22 caliber revolver to act as a makeshift silencer.

45. The first African-American female serial killer was Clementine Barnabet. Between 1909-1912, she invaded homes in Texas and Louisiana and killed entire families with an ax. The bodies were then arranged as part of a "Voodoo" ritual connected to her mysterious evangelical church.

Jeffrey Dahmer killed and ate his 17 victims in his one-bedroom apartment in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. His neighbours barely noticed anything besides the occasional smell of rotting meat in the hallway. He also often gave out sandwiches to people in his building that could've contained his victims’ flesh. Towards the end, right before he was caught, he had so many bodies in his apartment that he ran out of room and he stored one victim in his bathtub. He proceeded to shower over him every day for a month. He once accidentally consumed a drink laced with sleeping pills which he had made for his victim. When he woke, he found that his victim-to-be had burgled several of his personal items.

47. In 1896, a serial killer (Amelia Dyer) due to being executed was subpoenaed to give evidence in another trial, but it was decided that her testimony would be inadmissible, as she was considered legally dead upon receiving her sentence.

48. Kenneth McDuff, a Texas serial killer who was on death row, was then paroled, committed more murders and then finally executed. He caused an overhaul of the Texas Justice system including harsher paroles, more prisons and a rise in executions.

49. The first serial killer (Lewis Hutchinson) in Jamaica lived in a castle and hunted people for sport.

50. Canadian serial killer Karla Homolka helped her boyfriend rape and murder 3 teenage girls, one of them being her younger sister, to only be convicted of 12 years in prison. Homolka was released in 2005, is now remarried, and a mother of 3.