21st Century Serial Killers

American serial killer, rapist, and burglar, Richard Ramirez terrorised the people of California, primarily Los Angeles, between 1984 and 1985 before being eventually captured by the police. The brutal criminal, also known as Night Stalker, was finally found guilty of 43 charges, including 13 murders and was sentenced to death. While on a death row, he died of cancer. 

Edmund Kemper is a serial killer, rapist and a necrophile. He was charged, convicted and sentenced to eight concurrent life sentences in 1973 for murdering ten people, including his paternal grandparents and mother. Most of his victims were female college students and hitchhikers, whom he lured into his vehicle and then killed them. He later decapitated and violated them.

English serial killer Peter Sutcliffe was dubbed the Yorkshire Ripper as he was likened to the infamous unidentified serial killer, Jack the Ripper, by the press. Convicted of killing 13 women and injuring nine other, Peter Sutcliffe was sentenced to life imprisonment. In 2000, ITV aired a crime drama miniseries based on Peter Sutcliffe's murders titled This Is Personal.

Christopher Scarver is a convicted murderer whose physical assault on Jesse Anderson and serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer at the Columbia Correctional Institution resulted in the death of both Anderson and Dahmer. Already sentenced to life for killing a man named Steve Lohman, Christopher Scarver received two more life sentences for killing Anderson and Dahmer.

A convicted serial killer, David Berkowitz is believed to have killed six people and wounded seven others. He eluded the police for several months before being captured. He is currently serving six consecutive life sentences in the maximum-security prison, Shawangunk Correctional Facility. He was popularized by the media under the name “Son of Sam.”

Karla Homolka raped and killed three minors along with her ex-husband Paul Bernardo. After their arrest, Bernardo was sentenced to life imprisonment, while Homolka served 12 years in prison following a plea bargain. Although she had claimed that she was an unwilling accomplice to the killings, a videotape that surfaced after the plea bargain suggested otherwise, resulting in public outrage.

Joseph James DeAngelo is an American serial killer, rapist and burglar who carried out his crimes for many years in 1970s and 1980s and was finally captured by the police in 2018. The former police officer and auto mechanic, who was known by various names like Golden State Killer and Visalia Ransacker, was sentenced to life in prison in 2020.

Dennis Nilsen was a Scottish necrophile and serial killer who killed at least 12 boys and young men between 1978 and 1983. Also known as the Muswell Hill Murderer, Nilsen committed these crimes in London, England, where he would lure his victims into his house before strangulating them to death. He was convicted in 1983 of six counts of murder.

Lee Boyd Malvo was involved in the Beltway sniper attacks of 2002, which killed 10 people and injured three in the Washington Metropolitan Area. He had befriended his accomplice in the act, John Allen Muhammad, as a juvenile. Malvo is currently serving multiple life sentences at a supermax prison.

One of America’s most notorious serial killers, Robert Hansen was called ‘The Butcher Baker’ as he owned a bakery. He is said to have killed seventeen women and raped many others in and around Anchorage, Alaska, during the 1970s and 1980s. Most of his victims were strippers and sex workers. He was sentenced to 461 years in prison in 1984.

Beverley Allitt is an English serial child killer, convicted ,of murdering four children and grievously injuring several others. Previously employed as a State Enrolled Nurse, she attacked 13 children over a 59-day period, out of which four died. She received 13 life sentences for the crimes and is detained at Rampton Secure Hospital in Nottinghamshire.

Known as the Chessboard Killer, Alexander Pichushkin set out to kill people matching all the 64 squares on his chessboard, and would cross out a square with every kill. Mostly targeting elderly people, he managed to kill about 48 to 60 people and was eventually sentenced to life imprisonment.

Moses Sithole is a South African rapist and serial killer who killed at least 38 people between 1994 and 1995. Nicknamed the ABC Killer, as he started murdering women in Atteridgeville before continuing his killing spree in Boksburg and then in Cleveland, Sithole was imprisoned in 1997 and is currently incarcerated in Bloemfontein at the Mangaung Correctional Centre.

Ahmad Suradji’s dead father apparently asked him to collect the saliva of 70 women to gain invincibility, in a dream. This made him kill 42 girls and women, and then bury their bodies in a sugarcane plantation. The Indonesian serial killer was eventually convicted and executed by a firing squad.

Cary Stayner is a serial killer convicted of the murders of four women in 1999. He had a troubled childhood. His brother Steven was a kidnap victim, and Cary himself was allegedly molested as a young boy. As a young man, he became involved with drugs and entered the world of crime. He is currently on death row.

Wayne Williams is an American serial killer currently serving life imprisonment for the murders of two men in Atlanta, Georgia. Although he is convicted of only two murders, Wayne Williams is suspected to have committed at least 23 of the 30 murders that took place in Atlanta between 1979 and 1981. His chilling story has inspired TV series and films.