The Most Notorious Serial Killers in History

Although the term “serial killer” has only been around since the early 1970s, there have been serial killers documented back for hundreds of years. A serial homicide occurs in a number of separate events, which makes it different, both legally and psychologically, from mass murder.

According to Psychology Today:

“Serial killing involves multiple incidents of homicide—committed in separate events and crime scenes—where the perpetrator experiences an emotional cooling off period between murders. During the emotional cooling off period (which can last weeks, months, or even years) the killer returns to his/her seemingly normal life.”

Let’s look at some of the most notorious serial killers throughout the centuries­–keep in mind that this is not a comprehensive list, because there’s just no way to document every single case of serial murder throughout history.

Born in 1560 in Hungary, Countess Elizabeth Bathory has been called “the most prolific female murderer” in history by the Guinness Book of World Records. It’s said that she murdered as many as 600 young servant girls, to bathe in their blood to keep her skin looking fresh and youthful. Scholars have debated this number, and there is no verifiable count of her victims.

Bathory was well educated, wealthy, and socially mobile. After her husband’s death in 1604, rumors of Elizabeth’s crimes against serving girls began to surface, and the Hungarian king sent György Thurzó in to investigate. From 1601-1611, Thurzó and his team of investigators collected testimony from nearly 300 witnesses. Bathory was accused of luring young peasant girls, most of whom were between ten and fourteen years old, to Čachtice Castle, near the Carpathian Mountains, under the pretense of employing them as servants. 

Instead, they were beaten, burned, tortured, and murdered. Several witnesses claimed that Bathory drained her victims of their blood so she could bathe in it, believing it would help keep her skin soft and supple, and a few hinted that she had engaged in cannibalism.

Thurzó went to Čachtice Castle and found a dead victim on the premises, as well as others, imprisoned and dying. He arrested Bathory, but because of her social standing, a trial would have caused a major scandal. Her family convinced Thurzó to let her live under house arrest in her castle, and she was walled into her rooms alone. She remained there in solitary confinement until her death four years later, in 1614. When she was buried in the local churchyard, the local villagers raised such a protest that her body was moved to the Bathory family estate where she was born. 

Along with his cousin Antonio Buono, Kenneth Bianchi was one of the criminals known as The Hillside Strangler. In 1977, ten girls and women were raped and strangled to death in the hills overlooking Los Angeles, California. In the mid-seventies, Buono and Bianchi worked as pimps in L.A., and after a conflict with another pimp and prostitute, the two men kidnapped Yolanda Washington in October 1977. She is believed to have been their first victim. In subsequent months, they preyed upon nine more victims, ranging in age from twelve to nearly thirty years old. All were raped and tortured before being murdered.

Newspapers quickly latched onto the nickname “The Hillside Strangler,” implying that a single killer was at work. Law enforcement officials, however, believed from the start that there was more than one person involved.

In 1978, Bianchi moved to Washington State. Once there, he raped and murdered two women; police quickly linked him to the crimes. During questioning, they discovered similarities between these murders and those of the so-called Hillside Strangler. After police pressed Bianchi, he agreed to give full details of his activities with Buono, in exchange for a life sentence instead of the death penalty. Bianchi testified against his cousin, who was tried and convicted of nine murders. 

One of America’s most prolific serial killers, Ted Bundy confessed to the murder of thirty women, but the actual count of his victims is still unknown. In 1974, several young women vanished without a trace from areas around Washington and Oregon, while Bundy lived in Washington. Later that year, Bundy moved to Salt Lake City, and later that year, two Utah women disappeared. In January 1975, a Colorado woman was reported missing.

By this time, law enforcement authorities began to suspect they were dealing with one man committing crimes in multiple locations. Several women reported that they had been approached by a handsome man calling himself “Ted,” who often appeared to have a broken arm or leg, and asked for help with his old Volkswagen. Soon, a composite sketch began making the rounds in police departments throughout the west.