Serial Killers With Obsessive Groupies

One of the USA's most notorious serial killers, Jeffrey Dahmer was born and raised in Bath Township, Ohio, a middle-class suburb of Akron. Much has been made of his childhood tendencies -including cases of cruelty to animals- but to outward appearances, at least, he seemed to be a normal child. As an adult he was always gainfully employed and was perceived as quiet and polite by co-workers. At the time of his arrest he had been working at a chocolate factory in Milwaukee and living alone in a small one-bedroom apartment. Dahmer's home was searched on July 22, 1991, after a young man fled his apartment and flagged down a police car. An investigation revealed that the apartment contained the remains of 11 young men, most of them black, Hispanic, or Asian. The bodies had been dismembered, and Dahmer confessed that he had cooked and eaten some of the remains. Asked why he committed such heinous acts, Dahmer told police that he killed because he was "lonely" and did not want his victims to leave him. He explained that he would meet potential victims in bars, shopping malls, or adult bookstores, and invite them back to his apartment where, in exchange for money or beer, he would photograph them naked. He would then drug the beer and, once the victim was unconscious, strangle and dismember the body. Dahmer's victims ranged in age from 14 to 33. On February 15, 1992, Dahmer was found guilty on 15 murder counts in Wisconsin. He was subsequently convicted of another killing in his Ohio hometown. Charges linking him to other murders were dropped for lack of evidence. He was sent to prison in Wisconsin with 15 mandatory life sentences to serve. The first year of his sentence, Dahmer was isolated from the general prison population for his own protection. In 1994 he was sent to a maximum security facility in Portage and was allowed some contact with the other inmates. He died after a brutal beating to death late night November 28, 1994, by Christopher Scarver, a fellow inmate who claimed God had instructed him to murder Jeffrey Dahmer. Even after Dahmer's death, legal battles continue over his estate. Several families of his victims sued him and were awarded millions of dollars in restitution. Those families have since been trying to gain control of the contents of Dahmer's apartment, including a 55-gallon vat he used to decompose bodies and the refrigerator where he stored his victims' hearts.

An unwanted child born to a destitute family in Blacksburg, Virginia, Henry Lee Lucas' mother, 41-year-old Viola, turned tricks in their dirt floor cabin in front of the family. She hated her new son from the time he was born and continually abused him. Her husband Anderson, who had lost his legs in a railroad accident, was also constantly subjected to Viola's violence, but Henry, being a child, got the worst of it. Anderson eventually committed suicide by sleeping outside in the snow when he could no longer bear it, Viola entertaining another trick in his home; he contracted pneumonia and shuffled off this mortal coil. Henry, thus, bore the full focus of Viola's wrath after his pappy's unseasonable demise.

When Henry entered school in 1943, Viola in her meanness deliberately dressed him as a girl, even going so far to coif his hair into sausage curls, then sent him off to the schoolhouse, all dolled up, albeit barefoot. Not only forced to face the antagonism of his boy schoolmates as he attended to his education in such unlikely duds, he also had to face Viola's wrath when a teacher, pitying the lad, bought young Lucas a pair of shoes. Viola beat her son for accepting charity. This charmless woman killed any animals that her son tried to keep as a pet, and denied him medical attention when he cut his eye with a knife, leading to its surgical removal.

Viola once beat Henry with a a piece of lumber that put him in a coma, off and on, for three days. Viola's live-in lover, familiarly known as "Uncle Bernie," eventually took the Lucas lad to the hospital. In the demerit column, Uncle Bernie introduced Lucas to the joys of bestiality, teaching the boy how to kill hapless and unhappy animals after they had been tortured and sexually abused.

In March 1951, the 15-year-old Henry Lee Lucas picked up a 17-year old girl near Lynchburg, Virginia, propositioned her, then strangled her when she resisted the advances of this loathsome Lothario. He buried the corpse in the woods near Harrisburg, Virginia. (Lucas confessed to the murder in 1983.) Three years later, he was sent to prison for six years, convicted of the crime of burglary. Lucas escaped from prison twice in 1957, but was caught each time.

On September 2, 1959, he was released from prison and moved in with his sister in Tecumseh, Michigan, but his now-elderly mother demanded that he return with her to Blacksburg. It was there, on the night of January 11, 1960, that an intoxicated Viola struck her likewise intoxicated son with a broom and was stabbed to death for her transgression against his person. After his arrest, Lucas confessed that he had sexually assaulted his mother's corpse, though he soon recanted, a pattern of behavior that was a harbinger of things to come.

Henry Lee Lucas was sentenced to 20-40 years in prison for the killing of Viola and was clapped in the hoosegow in March 1960. He was soon transferred to the state hospital for the criminally insane, where he remained for six years. Paroled on June 3, 1970, he moved in with his relatives in Tecumseh. However, he ran afoul of the law in December 1971, charged with molesting two teenage girls, a charge later reduced to simple kidnapping. Sent to the state penitentiary, he was paroled in August 1975, over his own objections. Employed by a Pennsylvania mushroom farm, he married his cousin's widow in December of that year. They moved to Maryland, but they broke up, his wife eventually divorcing him in the summer of 1977, claiming that he had molested her daughters by a previous marriage.

Cast out, Henry Lee Lucas became a drifter, roaming throughout the South, allegedly killing female hitch-hikers as he moseyed along Interstate 35 in the Lonestar state of Texas. Fatefully, the 40-year old, one-eyed bisexual met the 29-year-old homosexual drifter Ottis Toole in a Florida soup kitchen in late 1976.

They hit it off immediately, becoming lovers and boon traveling companions; whether they actually were serial killers together is still clouded in mystery, though it likely is true.

In 1978, Toole and Lucas moved in with Toole's mother and sister in Jacksonville. Lucas fell in love with Toole's 10-year old female cousin, Frieda "Becky" Powell, whom he eventually adopted and lived with as husband and wife. But that lay in the future. Toole and Lucas went to work for a local roofing company, but they often missed work as they frequently went back on the road, two men born to ramble, spreading their version of hell along the highways and by-ways of America.

In 1981, Toole's mother and sister died within a few months of each other, and Becky and Frank were placed in juvenile homes. Returning to Jacksonville, Lucas helped obtain their release, and Becky and her brother Frank were taken on the road by the Henry Lee and Uncle Ottis, where they were exposed to the depravity of their murderous traveling show. It was at this time that Becky, Ottis Toole's niece, became the common-law wife of Lucas, who was over 30 years her senior. When child welfare authorities launched a search for Becky and Frank in January 1982, Becky fled to California with Lucas. Her brother Frank eventually wound up in a psychiatric facility in 1983 after bearing witness to the the brutality of his uncle and "brother-in-law."

From California, Lucas and Becky made it to Texas, winding up in the All People's House of Prayer, a religious commune outside of Stoneburg, Texas. But Becky was homesick, and in August 1982, this odd couple, husband and wife, were on the road again, hitchhiking, returning to Florida. On the night of August 23rd, in Denton County, Texas, the unlikely pair of lovers had an argument, and Becky slapped Lucas. As he had done 22 years earlier, Henry Lee reacted with a knife. He stabbed his young common-law bride to death. He then dismembered her corpse before returning to Stoneburg,

Lucas' story about Becky's disappearance was that she had vamoosed with a passing truck driver. Three weeks later, Lucas turned up missing the day after the disappearance of a local, Kate "Granny" Rich, an octogenarian. Lucas' car was found abandoned in Needles, California, less than a week later, on September 21st, then Lucas showed up again in Stonesburg on October 18th, the day after Rich's home was destroyed by a mysterious fire. The police arrested Lucas on a fugitive warrant from Maryland, but he was soon released.

Eventually, Lucas was jailed after returning to Stoneburg on June 11, 1983, arrested as he was an ex-convict who possessed a handgun. Lucas was remorseful for his murder of Becky, and had returned to the field where he had scattered her body parts to commune with the soul of his beloved. On the night of June 15th, Lucas summoned the jailer and offered a confession to expiate his sins: "I've done some bad things," he began.

Henry Lee Lucas confessed to the murder of Granny Rich, commenting that "he had killed at least a hundred more." For a year and a half, Lucas confessed to multiple murders.

At first, Lucas estimated he had killed 75 to 100 people, then he boosted the body-count to between 150 and 360, eventually reaching the 500 to 600 range when he factored in killings by his friends. Lucas implicated his erstwhile pal Ottis Toole in many of the murders, furthermore claiming that he and Toole had committed many murders as a hit-squad directed by a Satanic cult, "The Hand of Death," that Toole had introduced him to. A cannibal, Toole sometimes ate the flesh of their victims, although Lucas didn't join him in his insalubrious repast.

Toole, who was serving time on a Florida arson charge, didn't mind being implicated in mass murder by his former lover. In fact, he offered confessions of his own. By October 1983, police were sure that Toole and Lucas had committed at least 69 killings, which they announced at a press conference. The number was increased to 81 at a January 1984 press conference, and by March 1985, 90 murders had been attributed to Lucas in 20 states, and he and Toole were credited with a further 108 killings. Police would eventually claim over 200 murders were solved due to Lucas' confessions, as Lucas was taken to various states and had his memory prodded about unsolved killings.

At his trial, Lucas took responsibility for over 600 murders. He even claimed to have supplied People's Temple stalwart Jim Jones with the cyanide to effect the Guyana massacre. Ottis Toole, now on Florida's Death Row for murder, corroborated much of Lucas' confession, including his claims to have committed hundreds of murders, singly and as a duo.

Henry Lee Lucas eventually recanted his confessions, claiming that he was only trying to improve his living conditions in jail. He eventually claimed he only killed one person, his mother. Because of significant doubt as to Lucas' guilt, his death sentences were commuted to life in prison by Governor George W. Bush; it was the sole death sentence ever vacated by the then-governor, and allowed Henry Lee Lucas to die a peaceful death in prison. There were too many contradictions in Lucas' confessions which may have led to the re-opening of cases, so he could not be executed.

Charles Manson is one of the most notorious convicted murderers in American history, though ironically, there is no evidence that he ever killed anyone himself. In 1971, Los Angeles prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi used his "Helter Skelter" theory to successfully convict Manson and several of his female compatriots of seven murders: the Tate-LaBianca murders that shocked America and the world (the victims included heavily-pregnant movie star Sharon Tate). Manson was subsequently convicted of two other murders: Donald "Shorty" Shea, a hand at the Spahn Ranch where Manson and his cronies and female groupies congregated, who Charlie may have believed snitched on him to the police after the Tate-LaBianca murders; and the earlier murder of music teacher and small-time drug dealer Gary Hinman by Bobby Beausoleil.

Although Manson never did any of the actual murder, under the rules of accomplice liability, he was deemed as responsible for the murders as the actual perpetrators who caused the deaths of the nine people. Condemned to death upon conviction, his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment by the State of California after a 1972 Supreme Court decision struck down extant death penalties in the various states. On January 1, 2017, Manson was suffering from gastrointestinal bleeding at California State Prison in Corcoran when he was rushed to Mercy Hospital in downtown Bakersfield. On November 19, 2017, he died from cardiac arrest resulting from respiratory failure and colon cancer one week after his 83rd birthday. From the beginning of his notoriety, popular culture appeared around him, which he ultimately became an emblem of insanity, violence, and the macabre.

Joran van der Sloot was born on 6 August 1987 in Arnhem, Gelderland, Netherlands. He has been married to Leidy Figueroa since 4 July 2014. They have one child.

Along with his adopted cousin Angelo Buono Jr. he was part of "the Hillside Stranglers" pair. Bianchi's mother was a prostitute who gave him up for adoption as an infant. By the age of 11 he was having problems at school with his conduct and frequent tantrums. He tried for the police force but was rejected by the Glendale and Los Angeles Police Departments. In 1971 he wrote to a girl-friend claiming he had killed a man, but she did not take it seriously. From 1971 to 1973, 3 girls were killed in Rochester that became known as the 'Alphabet Murders' because the first and last initials of the their names were the same! Bianchi was later suspected of being responsible. In 1976 he moved down to Los Angeles where he lived with his adopted cousin (Angelo Buono). Ten women were killed between Oct 17 and December 9, 1977. The Hillside Stranglers displayed the bodies on hillsides near freeways to taunt the authorities. They impersonated policemen and preyed on prostitutes and female motorists. Their victims were tortured, raped and finally garroted. One of their prospective victims was Catharine Lorre (daughter of actor Peter Lorre) who testified that she had been approached by 2 policemen. The authorities now knew they were dealing with a pair of killers. In 1978 Bianchi went to Bellingham, Washington where he worked as a security guard. On January 11, 1979 2 women who had gone to meet him for a house-sitting job were found dead. Bianchi had been their last contact. His house was searched by the police and they found items stolen from his security guard posts. He was finally tied to the Hillside slayings in June 1979. In jail Bianchi feigned multiple personality. He agreed to testify against his cousin Buono and was facing 10 counts of murder. His cousin was arrested in Oct 1979. In June 1980 he received a letter from Veronica Lynn Compton (23) a poet, playwright and aspiring actress who wanted his opinion on new play regarding a female serial-killer. Compton it seems was fascinated with necrophilia. She agreed to go to Bellingham, strangle a woman there and deposit Bianchi's semen at the scene to confuse the police into thinking that the real killer was still on the loose. On September 16, 1980 she got a book from Bianchi, in prison, within which was concealed a glove containing his semen. On October 3, 1980 she was arrested for attempted murder. Bianchi's trial went on from November 1981 to November 1983. He was finally found guilty of 9 counts of murder and sentenced to 9 life terms without parole.

Douglas Clark was born on 10 March 1948 in Pennsylvania, USA. He died on 11 October 2023 in Marin County, California, USA.

John Wayne Gacy was born in 1942 and grew up in a working-class neighborhood of Chicago, Illinois. His father, John Stanley Gacy (1900-1969), was an alcoholic and beat him frequently during his violent rages. As Gacy grew up, he began to develop a identity crisis - doubting his own masculinity. At the age of 11, he suffered a blow to the head from a swing. Over the next five years, he had frequent blackouts until doctors found a clot in his brain that was removed with medications. Following that, he would feign 'heart problems' for attention.

He graduated from business college and started to work as a shoe salesman. Gacy married a co-worker worker, whose family owned a KFC in Waterloo, Iowa and began to work there as Manager. He gradually earned the respect of the local Jaycees. In May 1968 he was arrested for sexual misconduct with a young male employee. Gacy actually hired a thug to beat up the witness, which failed, and only increased the charges against him. He plead guilty to sodomy and was sentenced to 10 years. Gacy was a model prisoner and was paroled in 1970 after serving only 18 months.

He then moved to Chicago where he began his life anew as a building constructor. Gacy became popular with his new neighbors and colleagues. He would throw theme parties and often dress up as 'Pogo the Clown' for children's parties and charity shows. Gacy was also involved with the Democratic party and even had his picture taken with then First Lady Rosalynn Carter (wife of former President Jimmy Carter).

On February 12, 1971 he was once again charged with sexual misconduct towards a young man. The witness did not show up in court and the charges were dropped. He finished his parole on October 18, 1971. Gacy committed his first murder on January 3, 1972. His modus operandi would be to drive around town looking for young male runaways, ex-jailbirds or even male prostitutes. Gacy's victims ranged in age from 9 to 20 years. He would flash them a 'badge' or a 'gun' pretending to be an officer of the law and 'arrest' them. Gacy would then befriend them and take take them home where he showed them tricks with 'magic handcuffs'. Once he had subdued his victim he would torture, sodomize and garrote them. Then he would bury them in a crawl space beneath his house. When he ran out of space he began to dump bodies in neighboring rivers. After he divorced his second wife in 1976 the killings escalated as he had the house to himself. On October 25, 1976 he committed a double homicide! In December 1977 he actually let one of his victims leave after he had 'done' with him.

On December 12, 1978 he killed his 33rd and last victim; a 15-year-old boy, named Robert Piest, who lived in his neighborhood. This was Gacy's one big mistake. The victim had told someone he was going to see his "contractor" about a job and was never seen again. The "contractor" turned out to be Gacy. When the police dropped by his house they noticed the smell from the decomposing corpses underneath. When they saw his police record, it wasn't hard for them to get a search warrant of his house. A total of 29 bodies were extracted from the crawlspace and five more from the nearby river, of which 9 remain unidentified. Gacy was judged sane by the court psychiatrists and in 1980 was charged with 21 counts of life for murders committed before June 21, 1977 when Illinois reinstated the death sentence. For the 12 committed since then he got the death sentence.

Theodore Robert Bundy, more commonly known as "Ted", was one of the most prolific serial killers in the USA. He confessed to 36 murders, but nobody really knows how many had been committed or when he began his legacy of horror; the true total could be higher.

Ted was born to Eleanor Louise Cowell (Louise Bundy) and a father that had taken off when Eleanor discovered she was pregnant. In 1946, faced with limited options, she gave birth to him in an "unwed mother" facility and began a hopeless charade: as Ted grew up, she told him that her parents were his parents and that she was his sister. It wasn't until 1974 when he realized that his mother had lied to him for so many years. He grew to be a handsome, educated and intelligent man who appeared to be well-adjusted and affable. Bundy even volunteered for a crisis telephone hot-line (where he met famed author Ann Rule who was also a volunteer) and had a steady relationship with Diane Edwards (a.k.a. Stephanie Brooks), a girlfriend that would fuel his maniacal rage after she left him.

Ted was studying psychology at the University of Washington on January 31, 1974 when an attractive female student suddenly disappeared. Over the coming months and years, more disappearances followed. Ted's victims were generally young attractive women with dark hair parted in the middle. His modus operandi was to approach his potential victim feigning injury (for example, by wearing an arm-sling or a cast) ask them to help him carry his books or packages. He led them to a secluded area and when they were alone he would knock them on the head with a crowbar, stuff their bodies into his car, strangle them while they were unconscious and then rape the dead bodies (necrophilia). He would then leave the naked body in a wooded area, mostly Taylor Mountain in Washington State, where many of his victims were found.

Along with countless other suspects he was questioned by the police but he initially came out clean because he just didn't seem to 'fit the mold' of a maniacal serial killer. Bundy then went to law school at Salt Lake City, Utah where he murdered a police chief's daughter on October 21, 1974. Another murder followed, and another young woman went missing in Bountiful, Utah. In January 12, 1975, killings eerily similar to the Utah murders began popping up in Colorado. On August 16, 1975 he was arrested for being in possession of burglary tools by Salt Lake City police. When his bronze Volkwagen beetle was searched they found handcuffs, stockings and a home-made mask. Bundy was identified from a police lineup by a woman who had narrowly escaped his clutches in November 1974. In January 1977 he was extradited to Colorado to be tried for murder. In June 1977 he fled the Pitkin County Jail by jumping out of an open window. He was captured 8 days later.

He managed to escape again from the Garfield County Jail by sawing a hole in the ceiling of his cell on December 30, 1977. This time he traveled all the way to Tallahassee, Florida where he lived under pseudonyms including Christopher Hagen and Kenneth Misner. On January 15, 1978 he invaded the Chi Omega sorority on the Florida State University campus where he bludgeoned four girls and killed two. After he fled the Chi Omega sorority, he broke into the house of another woman and beat her severely before her worried roommates next door phoned the police. The young woman survived the attack. She would be his last living victim. On February 9, 1978 he kidnapped 12 year old Kimberly Leach, raped her and sliced her throat. Her body was found eight weeks later in a state park.

On February 15, 1978 he was arrested by Pensacola police when they did a check on his license plates and realized his car was stolen. Teeth impressions were made to compare to bite wounds found on one of the Chi Omega victims and the impressions matched the teeth marks on the victim. Bundy conducted his own defense with the help of several attorneys but, of course, it was all for naught; he was found guilty and sentenced to death by electrocution in 1979. A decade later, when death was finally looking down on him, he began confessing to a staggering amount of murders, 36 in total, but some investigators believe that the real total could be higher. He was executed on January 24, 1989 at the Florida State Prison in Starke, Florida. Many spectators cheered and celebrated his death with champagne.

Richard Ramirez was a drifter from Texas who ended up in Los Angeles (the serial killer capital of the world) in the early 1980s when 5 serial killers where committing crimes independent of each other.

Ramirez worked as a car mechanic and did odd jobs while in Los Angeles. He was fascinated with "satanism" and would play the rock band AC/DC's song "Night Prowler" on his stereo for hours on end. His first murder occurred in June 1984. His modus operandi was to break into his victim's house late at night through an unlocked window. Then he would threaten them in their beds with either a gun or another weapon. He would either shoot or club his victims to death and then mutilate their bodies. His oldest victim was 84 and his youngest only 6 years. In between his murders he would sometimes just abduct young girls, sexually molest them and then let them go. He began killing again on March 17, 1985. This time one of his victims survived and gave police a description her assailant--tall, Hispanic, curly hair, bulging eyes and wide-spaced, rotting teeth! The police began to check with local dentists because they believed their killer needed to have major dental work done. Most of Ramirez's initial targets were in and around the Montery Park area of Los Angeles. On March 27, 1985, in Whitier he beat a man to death and then carved out his wife's eyes and took them with him. On May 29 he left satanic pentagrams on one victim's body and on the walls. On July 20 he killed a total of 5 victims in 2 different locations. On August 8 authorities released information to the public that they were looking for a new serial killer dubbed "The Night Stalker". Ramirez then left Los Angeles for San Francisco, and the killings soon began there. On August 28 al stolen car from one of the "Night Stalker" murders was recovered near Mission Viejo. Police found fingerprints on the backside of the rear-view mirror. They matched Ramirez's, whose prints were on file because he had previously been arrested for traffic and drug violations. The police believed they had their killer.

They checked at places where Ramirez was known to have worked and found that he closely matched surviving victims' descriptions of the killer. On August 30, 1985 his mugshot made its way to the television and newspapers. On August 31 he was recognized by residents of an East Los Angeles neighborhood as he was walking down a street. They chased him and, though he tried to escape by attempting to steal a car, they caught him. Someone called police, and by the time they arrived the crowd had almost beaten him to death.

On September 29, 1985, he was charged with, among other felonies, 14 murder and 22 sexual assault charges. When Ramirez appeared in court he had a pentagram drawn on his palm that he proudly displayed and proclaimed, "Hail Satan!" Jury selection began on by July 22, and he went on trial. On September 20, 1989, he was found guilty of 13 murders and 30 felonies. He was sentenced to death.