The gun that Aileen Wuornos used to murder her victims.
Ian Brady has been taken to hospital after having a seizure. Brady, 74-years-old , who was jailed in 1966 for murdering three children, has been detained at Ashworth Hospital, Maghull, since 1985 and has been on successive hunger strikes since 1999 in an attempt to end his life. He is in Fazakerley Hospital where he will remain for at least 24 hours while undergoing tests.
German-born Johann Schmidt adopted the name Johann Hoch around 1895, the name being the maiden name of his first wife and his first victim. Hoch traveled around the United States, meeting women through lonely hearts advertisements, after which he bigamously married them. He is believed to have murdered at least 15 of them. Hoch’s chosen method of murder was arsenic poisoning; the poison was found in his fountain pen when he was finally arrested. He was hanged on 23 February 1906. In 1955 a pile of bones found hidden in the walls of a Chicago house were linked to Hoch. It is believed that he married at least 55 women and that such was his desire to obtain money from them that on one occasion he even removed gold false teeth from a glass of water beside his wife’s bed.
The case of Karla Homolka and Paul Bernardo was often referred to as the “Ken and Barbie” murderers. While dating, Karla and Paul drugged and raped 15 year old Tammy Holmoka, Karla’s younger sister. The couple videotaped the night; Tammy choked to death on her own vomit. Their second victim was 14 year old Leslie Mahaffy, who they kidnapped on her way home from school in June 1991. Mahaffy was raped and beaten for over 24 hours until Bernado strangled her with an electircal cord. They body was cut into pieces, encased in cement, and thrown into a lake. The cement quickly broke apart and the body was discovered. The same day that Mahaffy’s body was discovered, Bernardo and Holmoka got married. The third victim was 15-year old Kristen French who, like Mahaffy, was raped, tortured, and strangled with the same electrical cord. French’s body was left in an illegal garbage dump. Bernardo and Holmoka were caught in late 1992. Bernardo, who is also believed to be the Scarborough Rapist, was sentenced to life in the Kinston Penetentiary. Holmoka made a plea bargain, was convicted of manslaughter, and spent only twelve years in prison.
In some cases it is not that the psychopath necessarily wants to hurt somebody, but that he simply does not care whether he does so or not. Eventually the sexual act becomes interchangeable with murder. Henry Lee Lucas explained, “I get sex any way I can get it. If I have to force somebody to do it, I do. If I don’t, I don’t. I rape them. I’ve killed animals to have sex with them - always killed before I had sex. I’ve had sex with them while they’re still alive only sometimes. Then killing became the same thing as having sex”
Officially, Lucas was convicted of killing “only” eleven people, mostly hitchhikers in Texas along Highway I-35. However, he claimed to have committed 360 murders across the United States, Mexico, and Canada, beginning from 1952, when he was fifteen years old, until his arrest in 1982. Police discount some of his confessions and believe that most likely he killed in the vicinity of “only” a hundred people, tops. At one point on his history, Lucas was joined in his killing by Ottis Elwood Toole, a cannibalistic male prostitute. There was no recognizable sense or pattern to their killing. The victims were men, women, and children. They were young and they were old; they were prostitutes, businessmen, homemakers, tramps, and students. They were strangled, shot, stabbed, and battered to death. Some were raped; others were not. Some were mutilated and cannibalized while others were carefully buried. Some victims have never been identified to this day.
“Prostitutes were the easiest. I went from having sex with them to just plain killing them… The young ones stood out more when they talked when they were dying.”
Gary Ridgway, ‘The Green River Killer’ was a seemingly mild-mannered, married man whose own wife called him “a dream come true,” and had no idea he was one of the most prolific murderers in American history. Ridgway beat and strangled at least four dozen women during the 1980s and ’90s, often dumping their bodies in or near Washington State’s Green River. It is believed that he killed at least 71 women, most of them being prostitutes. Ridgway would also return to the victims body to have intercourse with it, sometimes while it was decomposed. DNA evidence eventually led to his arrest and conviction. To avoid the death penalty, he confessed to murdering 48.
Joe Ball ran a bar called the Sociable Inn, situated just outside Elmendorf, Texas. In his back yard he kept fice alligators in a concrete pool. This was something of a local attraction and Joe always fed the alligators fresh meat. At least two of his wives disappeared, as did a number of barmaids and waitresses. The police followed up these missing persons and interrogated Ball. It was believed that Ball killed these women and fed them to his alligators. Ball committed suicide on 24 September 1938 before any charged could be brought against him,
This alley is in the Whitechapel District is where some of the murders by Jack the Ripper took place.
Inside a steel cage in the courtroom, Andrei Chikatilo spent his time swaying autistically, spewing obscenities, baying the judge, and shouting out insane remarks such as “I’m pregnant and lactating.”
“I took the hand of the skeleton and scratched me and masturbated with the other hand of the skeleton.”
Marcelo Costa de Andrade (born in 1967) is Brazil’s most famous and most notorious serial killer. The son of poor migrants from the northeast, Andrade grew up in Rio De Janeiro. He was regularly beaten by his stepfather. When he was 10 he was sexually abused. At 14 he began to prostitute himself for a living. He was then sent to a reform school, but escaped. Still hustling by 16, Andrade began a lasting homosexual relationship with an older man. At 17 he tried to rape his 10-year-old brother. When he was 23 years old his relationship ended and he came back to live with his mother and his brother. He found a low-paying job and started going to church four times a week. His life seemed normal until April 1991, when he started to kill. Over a period of nine months Andrade brutally raped and strangled 14 boys aged 6 to 13. His victims of choice were poor street kids whom he attracted to deserted areas. He practiced necrophilia, decapitated one of them, crushed the head of another one, and, in two occasions, drank their blood. He later confessed that he did it to “become as beautiful as them”. His mind unbalanced by the sermons of a priest from the “Universal Church of the Kingdom of God”, Andrade declared that children would automatically go to heaven if they died before they’re thirteen and that he had done them a favour by sending them to heaven. In December of 1991, Andrade “fell in love” with 10-year-old Altair De Abreu and spared his life. It didn’t prevent him, however, from abusing and killing Altairs 6-year-old brother Ivan. Andrade then asked Altair to live with him and the boy agreed to spend the night with him in the bushes. The next day, the terrified youngster managed to escape and went to the police. Andrade confessed to 14 killings.
A head and hands found in the freezer of Jeffrey Dahmer.
The gravestones of Ottis Toole and Henry Lee Lucas. They were both buried in the prison cemetary, as nobody claimed their bodies.
