Our List of the Top 5 most Prolific serial killers of all time

This is a top list that no one should aspire to be on and if you do I suggest you turn yourself over to the authorities as soon as possible. Serial killers have the power to stun and leave the whole world in awe. Thier actions seems like something only a fictional writer could come up with. Join us on this journey as we discover the stories of these truly sick and brutal individuals.

Table of Contents

1. Ed Gein

What was Ed Gein’s childhood like?
Death in the family
What did Ed Gein do for a Living?
Who did Ed murder?
What happened at the trial?
How did Ed Gein Die?
Some more stomach-churning facts about what Ed Gein did

2. Ted Bundy

What was Ted Bundy like as a child?
Univerity years and his love-life
The Murders
Ted gets arrested, escapes murders again, and gets arrested again!
The trials of Ted Bundy
Interesting facts about Ted Bundy

3. Jeffrey Dahmer

Did everything go wrong from a young age?
The young adult years
The murders that shook Milwaukee and the world.
Discovering the truth about Jeffrey Dahmer. Arrest and Trial
Prison Life and death
Interesting things you may not know about Jeffrey Dahmer

4. John Gacy

A difficult childhood
Early career for this serial killer
The true John Gacy emerges
A new beginning
Full killing momentum
Caught caged and executed
Interesting facts about John Wayne Gacy

5. Jane Toppan

A pretty bad start
The perfect training for this serial killer
Private Victims
Sister dear sister how I hate thee
I will be with you to the end my dear friend
Back home once more
Discovering the monster and the trial
Interesting facts about Jane Toppan

Sources

1. Edward Theodore Gein better known as Ed Gein:

What was Ed Gein’s childhood like?

According to me, he is the worst serial killer, the way he killed and what he did to his victims is so grotesque. His mind totally left him I think, and it stems from the way his mother treated him when he was young and then as he got older the relationship got worse. His mother believed that all women are naturally prostitutes and instruments of the devil.

He was born on the 27^th 1906 in La-Crosse County Wisconsin. His father was an alcoholic and Ed’s mother despised him for that, he could not hold a job, and the family moved purposely to an isolated location in Plainfield, Wisconsin which became the family’s permanent residence.

The only time Ed would leave the farm was to go to school. In school the children and teachers said he was a shy boy with strange mannerisms, he would randomly burst into laughter as he was laughing at his private jokes. His mother would punish him for making friends, so he was very lonely and that isolated people from the world. I think that is one of the reasons that he became this totally peculiar person. He would have been much better if he could make friends. Friends are there to support each other, and with his mother, as the tyrant and his father as the alcoholic, he did not have much of a support structure. Despite having to deal with bad family development at home, he did fairly good at school, particularly in reading.

Death in the family

His father died on April 1, 1940, at the age of 66 of alcoholism. Ed and his brother did odd jobs to help cover the living expenses. He sometimes babysits for neighbors; he seemed to like that a lot as he relates more to babies than adults. Ed’s brother Henry was very worried about Ed’s relationship with their mother and often spoke ill of her around him, he would respond with shock and hurt.

On May 16, 1944, Ed and Henry were burning away marsh vegetation on the property. The fire got out of control and alerted one of the neighbors; firefighters were alerted. When the firefighters got the fire under control Henry’s body was found face down on the ground. The official cause of death was asphyxiation, and because there was no official investigation, there was no autopsy.

It is a general belief that Ed started with his killings with his brother although there was no evidence to base that on. Because the police did not investigate, we will never know what happened on that fateful day with his brother.

Ed and his mother were alone after his brother’s death, and his mother had a stroke that left her paralyzed.  Ed was devoted to her and took really good care of her. After a while, his mother had a second stroke, and her health deteriorated rapidly, she died on December 9^th, 1945 at the age of 67. Ed was devastated as he lost his best friend and lover which is also very disturbing.

What did Ed Gein do for a living?

Ed kept the farm and did odd jobs to keep the farm running. He boarded up most of the house including his mother’s bedroom, upstairs, downstairs, parlor and living room leaving them exactly as it were before his mother’s death. He lived in a small room next to the kitchen in absolute squalor. Around this time he became interested in death, cult magazines, cannibals, and the Nazis.

Who did Ed murder?

After Ed’s mother had died, he began to make a woman suit so that he can become his mother and crawl into her skin. Between 1947 and 1952 he made up to 40 nocturnal visits to three different local graveyards to exhume recently buried bodies. Other times he would dig up graves of middle-aged women who looked like his mother and took them home and tanned the bodies. I blame his mother for his behavior as he was not allowed to mix with different people when he was young, he only knew his mother and brother. When he was out of school, it was already too late as his mother was the biggest influence in his life, and she made him her lover and friend.

Ed also admitted to the shooting death of Mary Hogan she was a tavern owner and was missing since 1954, the police found her head in the house of Ed. He later denied the memory of her death. Ed told the police that the shrunken heads in his house came from his cousin in the Philippines. Upon further investigation, the police found it was human facial skin peeled from the corpses and used by Ed as masks.

Ed was also a suspect in the 1953 disappearance of Evelyn Hartley, a La Crosse babysitter. During questioning the Waushara County Sheriff Art Schley assaulted Ed by banging his head and face into a brick wall. As a result, the confession was ruled inadmissible. Schely died of heart failure in 1968 at the age of 43 before Ed’s trail. Many people believed that he was traumatized by the horrors of Ed’s crimes. That may have been part of what killed him. One of Schely’s friends said, “ He was a victim of Ed Gein as surely as if he had butchered him.”

What happened at the trial?

November 21, 1957, Ed was standing trial on one count of first-degree murder in Waushara County Court. He pleaded not guilty because of insanity needless to say he was unfit to stand trial. Ed may have been insane but I still firmly believe whether your insane or not to murder someone or to use someone’s skin to make furniture is very wrong and you should receive punishment according to the full extent of the law. He was sent to the Central State Hospital for the Criminally Insane (now the Dodge Correctional Intuition) and later transferred to the Mendota State Hospital in Wisconsin where he received a diagnosis that he has schizophrenia.

In 1986 the doctors determined that Ed was mentally stable to stand trial. The trial started on 7 November 1986 and lasted only one week. He was found guilty of murder by Judge Robert H. Gollmar on November 14. There was a second trail to deal with Ed’s sanity. Gollmar ruled not guilty because of insanity. Ed spent the rest of his life in a mental hospital, the way I see it, it was not enough for all the lives he destroyed. Due to cost, Ed was only tried for one murder, he also admitted to killing Mary Hogan.

Ed’s house and property were to be auctioned off to be a tourist attraction on March 30, 1958. The house burnt down in a fire on March 27. I say good riddens can you imagine what the families of the victims must have gone through and then see the house as a type of monument. Ed’s car that he transport his victims in was sold at a public auction for $760 to a carnival sideshow operator Bunny Gibbons.

How did Ed Gein die?

Ed died at the Medota Mental Health Institute due to respiratory failure secondary to lung cancer on July 21, 1984; he was 77 years old. During the years people would chip his gravestone to have mementos, in 2000 the stone was stolen and recovered in July 2001 near Seattle after that the Waushara County Sheriff’s Department put the stone in storage, the grave itself is now unmarked.

Some more stomach-churning facts about what Ed Gein did

He might not have a gravestone but is still famous after all these years and people still talk about him. Listed below is a few items that the police discovered in the house of Ed Gein:

•     Whole Human Bones and Fragments.
•     Wastebasket made of human skin.
•     Human skin covered chairs.
•     A corset made of a female torso skinned from shoulders to waist.
•     A belt made from nipples, girls to believed to be the age of 15 years.
•     Lampshade made from human skin.

Ed Gein’s life has made it into our pop culture with a few films adapted from his life and a few books as well. I wonder if people like Ed Gein kill people to gain celebrity status. If you think about it how many years of work do most A-list celebrity put in to become famous and stay famous? Serial killers kill people for years and are talked about decades after.

2. Theodore Robert Bundy A.K.A Ted Bundy

Ted Bundy is my second choice because of all the women he killed and raped; he had a very perverse mind. He did not care about the people but rather see them as objects for him to play with. Bundy used his charm and wit to win women’s trust if they only knew what awaited them.

What was Ted Bundy like as a child?

Ted was born on November 24, 1946, in Burlington Vermont. He never knew the identity of his father since his mother changed the father’s name a few times and she is the only one that ever knew. I think the fact that he did not have a father figure in his life made an enormous impact on him.

His paternal grandparents raised him for the first three years of his life. The reason is because in that period you were treated as an outcast if you had children out of wedlock.  He thought for a long time that his grandparents were his birth parents and his mother was his sister. How he came about the truth varies, but he was neither less shocked or hurt by the news. Ted resented his mother for the rest of his life for not telling him about his father. The fact that he had to discover who his birth mother was on his own made things even worse.

He spoke very warmly about his grandparents, but his grandfather would go into fit’s of rage and bully Ted, and his wife. His grandfather also hated religious people. All came to light when Ted’s behavior came into question, and at some point, people had the idea he learned to be aggressive from his grandfather.

Ted would have very weird ideas on how to occupy himself when he is bored. On one occasion he would put knives around his aunt sleeping in bed. Then, stand on the edge of the bed and keep on smiling about it until she wakes up and screams in horror about what happened.

Ted chose to be alone in his later years as he does not seem to have a grasp on relationships. He claims he had no natural sense of how to develop friendships. He had a few classmates in school that said they liked him and he was well liked around the school. It is my opinion that Ted had the social skills for friendships but it was never given a chance to grow, and nobody helped him and stood by him as a true friend.

University years and his love life

After high school in 1965, Ted spent a year at the University of Puget Sound before transferring to the University of Washington in 1966 to study Chinese. So here we can see we are dealing with an individual with a good academic background. Where other serial killers may have been denied academic opportunities this was not the case with Ted. He did, however, have a gross lack of social skills.

In 1967 he became romantically involved with another student by the name of Stephanie Brooks. He abandoned college in 1968 and took a few menial minimum wage jobs, why he dropped out of college, we will never know. He also volunteered to work at the Seattle office of Nelson Rockefeller’s presidential campaign. Ted felt that Stephanie was his rock and in all of his other failed relationships, he felt that the relationship he had with Stephanie is his pride and joy.

After the campaign, Stephanie ended their relationship, as she was frustrated by Ted’s immaturity and lack of ambition. Psychiatrist  Dorothy Lewis would later say that this was one of the pivotal moments in his life as it devastated him.

After his relationship had ended with Stephanie, he went to Philadelphia and enrolled for one year in the University of Temple. I think he enrolled since it was one of the reasons that Stephanie left him, maybe he wanted to prove his self-worth by saying I do have ambition. It is widely thought that in early 1969  Ted found out about his true parentage. In the fall of 1969 he was back in Washington and well over his relationship with Stephanie, now he was involved with Elizabeth Kloepfer a divorcee from Utah. She worked as a secretary at the University of Washington School Of Medicine. They had a very stormy relationship, but they did, however, decide to stay together.

In 1970 Ted was a very different person he was focused, and goal orientated he enrolled at the University of Washington but this time as a psychology major. He became an honor student and was very well regarded by his professors.

In 1971 he took a job at the Seattle Suicided Crises Hotline Centre, there he met and worked alongside one of the centuries most beloved and well-known criminal writers Ann Rule, she would later write a biography on Ted called “ The Stranger Beside Me .“  Ann saw nothing disturbing in Ted’s behavior at the time and described him as kind, solicitous and empathetic.

After graduating in 1972, Ted joined Governor Daniel J Evan’s re-election campaign. Posing as a college student, he shadowed Evan’s opponent former Governor Albert Rosellini, Recording his speeches for the Evans team. After Evan’s re-election, Ted then became an assistant to Ross Davis Chairman of the Washington State Republican Party.

As you can see with Ted’s education, he became sought after and is now a very strong and reassured person, his jobs and recognition also gave him a lot of confidence. He can now function in a well-maintained society. Ross thought well of Ted describing him as ‘’smart, aggressive and a believer in the system “, and I have to add that it would be the same system that he believed in that would later put him on death row.

In the year 1973, Ted was accepted to the law schools of Utah despite the mediocre admissions test scores; Ted got a lot of recommendation letters from his employer and some of his psychology professors.

While on a trip to the Republican Party to California in the summer of 1973, Ted rekindles his relationship with Stephanie Brooks. Stephanie was very excited about his transformation and how he had become very successful and professional. Also, she was very proud of his legal and political career. She was a very educated person herself and all she ever wanted for Ted was to succeed in life. He was at the time still involved with Elizabeth, neither women knew of each other. Ted was now so confident in life he started abusing this confidence by thinking it a good idea to have relationships with two women at the same time.

Both women cared for him a great deal although there was a very big difference between his relationships, with Elizabeth he had a lot of confrontation and a lot of the times their ideas and goals were clashing as he was very ambitious. Ted’s relationship with Stephanie was one of ideas and goals shared. Stephanie was proud of the man he became. There was a lot of affection between them. I think it stems from the fact that Stephanie was his first true love.

Ted graduated UPS law school in 1973 he was still with Stephanie, and she would fly to Seattle several times to be with him. As she was Ted’s focal point when it came to his relationships they started talking about marriage and at one point he introduced Stephanie to Ross his friend and employer as his fiancée.

January 1974 he suddenly broke all contact with Stephanie, he answered no calls, no letters. He just disappeared from her life. Feeling distraught and very emotional Stephanie finally reached him by phone a month later were she demanded from Ted what happened? And what the reason for the sudden end of their relationship was? Ted responded with a very calm and collected voice he has no idea what on earth she is talking about and then the conversation ended abruptly when he just hung up the phone.

The phone call was the last time that Stephanie would hear from Ted. Later in his life, he said that he just wanted to prove that he could marry Stephanie. That does not sound like a very convincing statement. My guess would be that at one point his relationships would become public and he knew he had to end either one or both. Why he chose to end the relationship with Stephanie is intriguing. Especially as they are very compatible with each other or at least with their education. Stephanie later made a statement of her account. She said that Ted had planned the courtship and breakup in advance as vengeance for when she broke up with him in 1968, she broke his heart, and he felt that he should do the same to her.

The Murders

Nobody knows when or where Ted started to kill. He would tell different stories to different people and would simply refuse to talk about the details of his earliest kills. He would confess and talk explicitly about all his other murders. It makes you wonder how many women did he kill and where did it start. Was it something that ticked him off? Was it a relationship with a friend or lover that went south? we will never know.

Ted claimed that he first attempted kidnapping was in 1969 Ocean City, New Jersey. But he did not kill anyone until 1971 in Seattle. That is if you can believe him since it started much earlier. He told Art Norman, a psychologist that he killed two women in Atlantic City while visiting family in Philadelphia in 1969. At that stage, it must have been so easy for him to kill. He quickly killed then visits his family as it was part of his daily life. Much like the series Dexter where he would go in the evening for his kill. The difference is where Dexter is make believe, Ted Bundy was very much real as the people he killed. It saddens me to think that anybody would think that it would be socially acceptable to take another human being’s life.

Homicide detective Robert Keppel and Ann Rule the very successful crime writer both believed in their professional opinions that Ted started killing in his teenage years. He was very good at disguising it as he was building his career and very focused on making himself respectable in society. It is also believed that many of the people that came in contact with him during his booming career years would never have thought that Ted could be a serial killer. He did not exhibit the early signs of serial killing.

There was some evidence that he killed an eight-year-old girl Ann Marie Burr in 1961 when he was just 14 years old. He did deny it from the start and they could not prosecute as there was not enough evidence. Ted’s earliest kills from his admission were committed 1974 when he was 27 years old. He also said that he was a master at concealing evidence at crime scenes, that was also before the era of DNA profiling.

Just after he ended his relationship with Stephanie on 4 January 1974 he went to the house of Karen Sparks an 18-year-old dance student at the University of Washington, he then bludgeons her with a metal rod. Now it is at this stage where I would ask why? Why, would any reasonable person go to a random house with a young girl and beat her senselessly on her head. Is it because of his failed relationships with women? Or did he just feel to let off some steam? And to make the picture clear the metal rod was part of her bed frame he then assaulted her sexually with the same rod. This caused her to suffer from extreme internal bleeding. She did miraculously survive the ordeal, but she has permanent disabilities.

Then it started with female college students that disappear at around one per month. It must have been so freighting to have been women on that campus; they must have started talking and fearing not knowing who will be next. Ted targeted a few other campuses about  60 miles Southwest of Seattle and about 110 miles Southeast of Seattle. Ted has now established that he mostly like to kill women who are at University. Nobody would have ever suspected him, and the police were very concerned as women kept disappearing and nobody knew anything.

Ted got another offer from a University, this time it is the University of Utah Law School. In August of 1974, Ted moved to Salt Lake City. This was Ted’s second attempt at the first year curriculum of Law; Ted felt very disappointed that he could not understand the classes. A month after Ted started at the University of Utah more murders occurred. Including two bodies that remained undiscovered until Ted confessed the location shortly before his execution.

Ted raped and strangled a hitchhiker on 2^nd September 1974; Ted disposes of the remains in a  nearby river. 2^nd October, Ted kidnapped 16-year-old Nancy Wilcox from a suburb in Salt Lake City. Ted dragged Nancy in the bushes and raped her; Ted said he accidentally strangled Nancy as he tries to drown out her screams. Nancy ‘s remains were buried in Capitol Reef Park. Nancy’s body was never found.

Ted’s appetite for rape and murder seems to become insatiable, and he starts killing at an accelerated pace. 18 October, Ted kidnapped Melissa Anne Smith she was just seventeen years old and the daughter of the police chief of Midvale.

Ted seem quite confident in himself as he progressed with his murders. Nine days later Melissa’s naked body was found in the mountains. Melissa’s post-mortem showed that she was alive for seven days after her disappearance. 31^st of October 40km south of Lehi, Laura Ann Aime disappeared. Laura Ann’s body was found 14km northeast in American Fork Canyon on Thanksgiving day. Melissa and Laura Ann both were raped, sodomized and strangled with nylon stockings. Ted would later say that he played with Melissa and Laura Ann’s corpses; Ted would shampoo the hair and put makeup on the faces.

8 November, Ted approaches Carol DaRonch at the Fashion Place Mall. Ted told her that he was a police officer from the Murray Police Department. He then told her that he saw someone trying to break into her car and Carol should come with him to the police station to file a complaint. Carol was just 18 years old; Carol worked as a telephone operator. She had no reason to distrust Ted, as he identified himself as a police officer and she felt safe enough to travel to the office of the police department.

Carol pointed out to Ted that the road they are on is not on the way to the police department. Ted pulled off the road and tried to handcuff Carol’s hands and in the struggle he fastened both cuffs on the same wrist. Carol saw her chance and managed to open the car door and escape. Needless to say, Ted was upset with himself, and later that evening seventeen-year-old Debra Jean Kent disappeared from her theater production. In the parking, lot detectives found the keys that unlocked the cuffs that were on Carol’s wrist.

Ted moved on to Utah, Colorado where on January 12^th,1975  he kidnapped a 23-year-old nurse Caryn Eileen Campbell. Caryn’s naked body was found a month later close to a dirt road. Caryn was killed from blows to her head with a blunt instrument. Caryn had deep cuts in her body from a sharp knife.

15^th March, Ted approaches a ski instructor Julie Cunningham. Ted was on crutches and asked her to help him put his ski boots in the car. Ted clubbed and handcuffed Julie then went to a second location raped and strangled her to death. Weeks after Ted killed Julie he drove six hours to visit her remains again.

April 6^th Denise Lynn Oliverson disappeared near the Utah- Colorado border in Grand Junction. Denise was on her bike on her way to visit her parents; she was twenty-five years old. Denise’s sandals and the bike were found under a viaduct near a railroad bridge.

May 6^th, Ted moved on to Pocatello, Idaho where he lured a twelve-year-old girl Lynette Dawn Culver from her Alameda Junior School. Ted drowned and then sexually assaulted Lynette’s body. After Ted felt satisfied he disposed of her body in a river north of Pocatello.

June 28^th, Ted still not satisfied with all the havoc he wreaked through his killing, and sexual assaults abduct Susan Curtis from the Brigham Young University in Provo. Susan’s murder was the last confessed murder from Ted before he entered the execution chamber. Bodies of 6 women including that of Susan is still not found.

Before the arrest of  the police in Washington state struggled with the massive amount of data from the killing spree in the Pacific North West. They used the King County payroll computer and put in all the data they have compiled. Ted was one of the names that came up as a Volkswagen owner. Out of 26 different lists, Ted’s name came up, and the police did a search for the 100 best suspects and Ted’s name came up again.

Ted gets arrested, escapes murders again, and gets arrested again!

Ted’s arrest was not even for the murders he committed; Ted got pulled off the road for a driving violation in August 1975. He fled and sped through stop lights when he stopped the police searched his Volkswagen vehicle and found the following: handcuffs, ice-pick, crowbar, pantyhose with eyeholes cut in. Looking at all the contents in the car the police thought he had committed a burglary. The Police then proceeded to arrest him on that suspicion.

The items found in Ted’s car was compared to what Carol saw in his car; Carol was the lucky one that got away. Carol picked Ted out in the line-up too. The police felt that they had enough evidence to charge Ted with attempted kidnapping. The police compared evidence of the tri-state murders, and they had enough evidence to charge Ted for that as well.

Ted stood trial in February 1976 for the attempted kidnapping of Carol. After he had waived his right to a jury trial, he was found guilty and sentenced to fifteen years in jail. During the time Ted was sentenced the police found a link from Ted to the Colorado murders.

October 1976, Ted was charged with the murder of Caryn Campbell. Ted was extradited from the Utah prison to Colorado for his trail. He was his own legal representative, and that gave him the opportunity to move freely in the courtroom. Ted escaped through the law library and was captured a week later.

Ted thought that after his first failed escape he should try again and on 30^th of December 1977. He escaped from prison and rented an apartment under the name Chris Hagen. The apartment was near Florida State University. College was something Ted knew well, and Ted enjoyed it. He paid the bars and food with stolen credit cards. He would sometimes get bored and join the lecture halls to listen to the speakers.

Ted never really buried his desire to kill, and on 14^th January 1978, Ted broke into the Chi Omega Sorority house. He then bludgeoned and strangled two women to death. Ted raped one of the women, and he brutally bit her nipple. Bundy was in his proverbial “zone” at that stage, and two other women were beaten until they could barely move. He got interrupted, and before he had a chance to kill the other two women. The alarm was raised and Ted removed himself from the situation.

Ted was at it again this time kidnapping 12-year-old Kimberly Leach. He Mutilated Kimberly and raped her badly. 1 A week after the disappearance of Kimberly, Bundy was arrested at Pensacola for driving a stolen vehicle. It is so strange that the police never arrested him first for the murders but, he somehow got caught driving stolen vehicles, well at least the traffic cops did a good job.

9^th of February 1978 was the day of Ted’s last arrest, and it was a joyous day for a lot of people. He thought he was clever and that he could beat the justice system and turned down the plea bargain. Ted would then plead guilty on the two sorority women and Kimberly’s murders and would serve three 25 year sentences to be served consecutively.

The Trials of Ted Bundy

Ted was finally on trial on June 25, 1979. He played the media when he acted as his own attorney. Ted lost his case and was found guilty on both sorority murder charges. Now he got handed two death sentences by electric chair.

7^th January 1980, Ted was on trial again this time for the murder of Kimberly Leach. Ted was not as confident as the first trial and Ted had his attorney with him. With so much evidence against Ted, the only defense they had was the insanity plea. Needless to say, Ted was found guilty again and received his third death sentence.

In a surprise turn of events Ted asked Carol Boone to be a character witness for him. She was convinced of his innocence, Ted asked her to marry him while she was on the witness stand and she later bore him a little girl that Ted loved a lot. Carol divorced Ted a few years after she realized that Ted was guilty of all those crimes.

Ted’s execution date was on January 17^th, 1989. Just before Ted’s execution, Ted confessed to the details of 50 women he had killed. Ted confessed that he kept some of the women’s heads as trophies and engaged in necrophilia with some of them.

In Ted’s last interview he blamed his exposure to pornography at a young age for his murderous obsession. There are a lot of people that are subjected to pornography at a young age, and I see it as a poor excuse for murdering so many innocent people. Some people believed that Ted killed more than 100 women, but it can not be proved. Ted died at 7:13 am, and the people outside the jail cheered as he breathed his last breath.

Interesting facts about Ted Bundy

Ted’s paternal father was his grandfather. Ted’s mother gave birth to him in 1940, and at that time it was not good to be single and to have a child. Ted was told that his mother was his sister and that his grandparents were his real parents.

Ted kept a toolkit of the killing trade in his car. When his long time girlfriend Liz Kloepfer turned Ted into the police, Liz told the police that Ted has a lug wrench, crutches, an orient knife and a meat cleaver that was just some of the items he hides in his car.

Ted helped to bring the Green River Killer to justice. Now that is so strange for someone to help bring another serial killer to justice as Ted was so self-centered. On death row, Ted contacted Detective Robert D Kepple to help him understand the inner working of a serial killer’s mind and ultimately helped identify the Green River Killer.

Ted’s life has been portrayed in countless books, movies and movie series

Ted’s Volkswagen is currently on display at Alcatraz East a new museum that opened in 2016.

Quotes from this killer

Ted said some of the most chilling quotes that rattle even the hardest core crime fanatic. Ted believed that he could manipulate the court and the media that he was innocent of all crimes. Some of the quotes: “ I’m the most cold-hearted son of a bitch you’ll ever meet.” “We serial killers are your sons; we are your husbands, we are everywhere. And there would be more of your children dead tomorrow”. “ I think I stand as much chance of dying in front of the firing squad or a gas chamber as you doing being killed on a plane flight home. Let’s hope you don’t.”

Religion

Ted was not much of a religious man. It did not stop him to be baptized into The Church Of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints between August and September of 1975. Ted was in later excommunicated by the LSD Church after Ted’s kidnapping conviction in 1976. When Ted got arrested he was asked what religion he was. He told the police he was a Methodist it was the religion Ted had when he was a child.

Handwriting Analysis

One of Britain’s most leading graphologist Sheila Lowe analyzed the handwriting of Ted. Sheila note that throughout Ted’s letter Ted had long hooked strokes they are called the harpoons, the harpoons are prominent in Ted’s left-hand margin. Sheila saw the anger and the resentment of Ted’s past in his left-hand harpoons.

“The slack, disturbed rhythm signifies poorly integrated personality, which is common in serial killers.” The crowded spatial arrangement interferes with his ability to a clear perspective and to understand what is appropriate.  The personal pronoun has an emphasis on the mother area, so Ted’s view of women is unrealistic and had no father figure to balance it out. Sheila concluded: “The crowded picture of space, large personal pronoun, and rigid initial strokes suggest the need for power and control. Ted does not possess the rhythm of positive energy or willingness to work hard for what he wanted; Ted would rather take control of whatever is the easiest for him at the moment”.

3. Jeffrey Dahmer A.K.A Milwaukee Cannibal

Jeffrey Dahmer was born on May 21, 1960, in West Allis, Wisconsin. He is widely known because of the way he raped and murdered

Did everything go wrong from a young age?

Jeffrey had a difficult childhood. His mother Joyce Dahmer was known to be tense, greedy for attention and argumentative with her husband and neighbors. Jeffrey’s father, Lionel Dahmer, was busy with his studies in chemistry and did not see much of his family. Neither of Jeffrey’s parents spent much time with him.

There was a lot of arguing between Jeffrey’s parents and Jeffery recalled it as “extreme tension.” At the age of four, Jeffrey went into surgery to correct a double hernia. After the surgery, Jeffrey changed and started to withdraw from his family and friends.

Jeffrey’s parents eventually parted and for the most part left Jeffrey alone. At the age of ten, he started to experiment on dead animals. This is one of the classic signs of serial killing. I believe if Jeffrey’s parents had shown more interested in him they would have seen the early signs of peculiar behavior. Who knows he might have turned out different. Jeffrey’s path was already laid out for him as he had a rotten foundation and with parents that are divorced, Jeffrey did not have much to go on when it came down to family support.

Jeffrey would decapitate rodents, bleached chicken bones and even mounted a dog head on a stake. One of Jeffrey’s classmates described Jeffrey as the following: “ He was lost. He seemed to cry out for help, but nobody paid attention to him at all”.

At 16 years of age, Jeffrey got drunk in school at eight am in the morning.

Jeffrey’s father enlists Jeffery in the army so that he can get rid of the withdrawn personality and drinking problems. Jeffrey served only two years in the army. Not surprising he got kicked out because of his alcoholism.

The young adult years

In June 1978, Jeffery lived alone, and this was when Jeffrey started with his killing. Jeffrey picked up a hitchhiker called Steven Hicks and took him for drinks at his house. When Steven said he wanted to leave Jeffery got mad. He then proceeded to crush Steven’s skull with a barbell. Strangle him dismembered Steven’s body and buried the body pieces in the backyard. Jeffrey later said that he killed Steven because he did not want him to go. Jeffrey’s father was at his wits ends with him and sends Jeffrey to live with his grandmother.

In Milwaukee, Jeffrey worked at the first for Blood Plasma Company and later in a chocolate factory.

Jeffrey was arrested in 1986 of indecent exposure. Not one to stop with his bad behavior he Gets arrested again after he masturbated in front of two boys. Jeffrey got a one-year probationary sentence.

The Murders that shook Milwaukee and the world

Nine years have passed since Jeffrey’s first murder, and in September 1987, Jeffery kills again. Jeffrey picked Steven Tuomi up at a bar and killed him on impulse. Jeffrey later stated that he had no recollection of Steven’s murder. He bought a large suitcase to transport Steven’s body into his grandmother’s basement. He then dismembered Steven’s body and masturbated on the corpse before disposing of the remains.

Jeffrey’s grandmother started to finding disturbing things in her house including a .357 Magnum under Jeffrey’s bed. Another peculiar and disturbing find was a male mannequin in his closet. Jeffrey continued to dissect dead squirrels in the basement and dissolved them in chemicals.

Between September 1987 and March 1988 three young men disappeared in the Milwaukee area. Jeffrey was the one who picked them up at bars. Staying true to his ritual he drugged so he can dismember them in his grandmother’s basement. By the end of 1988, his grandmother could not take the experimental activities, and Jeffrey had to move out.

Jeffrey moved closer to his work at the chocolate factory. A day after he moved into his new apartment he brought a thirteen-year-old Laotian boy to his apartment. Jeffrey drugged the boy with sleeping pills and attempted to fondle him. The boy escaped, and the police were informed of the incident.

Jeffrey was charged with sexual assault. While Jeffrey was on bail awaiting sentencing, he killed five more victims. He kept the skull of his victim boiled the flesh from it and painted the skull. Jeffrey was sentenced to a one year in prison and five years parole. Jeffrey was released early in 1990 and soon resumed his killing career. Jail time did not slow Jeffrey down, it fired him up and gave him more energy and savvy.

In 1991 Jeffery lured 14-year-old Konerak Sinthasomphone to his apartment to pose for photographs in his underwear. Jeffrey then drugged Konerak. After he had felt the boy was out for the count and would not go anywhere  Jeffrey decides to slip out of the apartment to buy more drinks.

Unbeknown to Jeffrey, Konerak somehow escapes and when Jeffrey returns Konerak was half naked and dazed in the middle of the street. Jeffrey runs after Konerak so that he can recapture his now confused victim. While Jeffrey was in pursuit of Konerak the police arrived. Jeffrey convinced the police that Konerak was his nineteen-year-old drunk lover and the police helped Konerak back into the apartment. Poor Konerak never stood a chance after that. Jeffrey proceeded to strangled Konerak to death, dismembered his body and kept his head as a souvenir. Before disposing of Konerak’s body, Jeffrey took more photographs of Konerak’s body.

Jeffrey felt so confident that the police will never catch him that Jeffery started to kill one person per week in the fatefull summer of 1991. For some reason Jeffrey thought that he could turn his victims into zombies so that he could have youthful submissive sexual partners. Jeffrey used the most horrible techniques on his victims, and it is surprising that his second name is not Frankenstein. Jeffrey would drill holes into the skulls of his victims and inject hydrochloric acid or boiling water into their brains for reasons only Jeffrey would know.

Most serial killers would have one signature and would usually kill only a certain type of race or color; this did not seem to bother Jeffrey as he was all over the racial map. Jeffrey decided that he would look for his next victims in Chicago.

Again Jeffrey picked up not one but two males at a bar and persuaded them to accompany him back to Milwaukee for photographing. He killed both of them and kept their heads in the freezer and their bodies in barrels of acid.

Four days after that incident in July 1991, Jeffrey killed two more people in the same way. It does not seem that Jeffrey could contain his urges to kill. This makes me think about Dexter, for those of you who do not know who Dexter is. Dexter is a blood analyst for the police department in Maimi and in his spare time he kills other serial killers. Dexter’s kills are clean and precise, and he would put his victims on a steel table naked, and kills them with a knife, dismembered the bodies with a chainsaw and put the parts in plastic bags and dispose of the remains in the sea. Dexter had a code that he would kill by, and he also had urged that he had to control. Take note that this is a fictional story.

Discovering the truth about Jeffrey Dahmer. Arrest and Trial.

Just imagine keeping people’s heads in your freezer. It takes a committed serial killer to have that in his apartment in my opinion. You can image that with all that beheading and experiments the smell cannot be contained and the residents of Oxford Apartments Complex where Jeffrey resided started to complain about the awful smell and loud noises from falling objects from Jeffrey’s apartment.

Jeffrey did not know this, but he would come to the end of his killing spree on July 22. Jeffrey thought that this was just another kill and he would continue for a long time. For the last time, Jeffrey lured Tracy Edwards into his apartment. Jeffrey forced Tracy into his bedroom with a butcher knife. Jeffery tried to cuff Tracy, and a struggle ensued, and Tracy somehow escaped and flagged town a police car. A freaked out Tracy with the cuffs still on one of his arms told the police that there was a mad man in the Oxford Apartment Complex that tried to cuff him and forced him into the bedroom with a butcher’s knife.

The police went to Jeffrey’s apartment, what the police saw there shocked them, they saw Polaroid photographs of dismembered bodies and skulls. The police also discovered a skeleton in the shower of Jeffrey’s apartment. After the discovery, the police arrested Jeffrey and so Jeffrey’s reign of killing came to an end.

Upon further investigation, the police discovered more severed heads throughout his apartment and a heart in the freezer. A total of seven skulls were in Jeffrey’s apartment. Jeffrey also built an altar with candles and human skulls in the closet. He practiced cannibalism and boasted about how he ate one of his victim’s flesh and seasoned it with salt and pepper and A1 sauce.

Jeffrey was indicted on 17 murder charges, and the trial started on January 30^th, 1992. There was overwhelming evidence against Jeffery, and it was a slam dunk case. Jeffrey pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity that is one of the most famous ways a serial killer would try to bypass the death sentence. Jeffrey’s trial lasted two weeks, and the court declared him sane, and he was found guilty of 15 counts of murder.

Prison life and death

Jeffrey adjusted well in prison and even took up religion. In the beginning. He was apart from the general population, and after a while, Jeffrey convinced the authorities that he could be part of the general population in jail. Jeffrey was granted permission by the Columbia Correctional Institution to be baptized by a local pastor.

Like all other inmates in prison, Jeffrey was assigned to work in prison. November 28^th, 1994, Jeffrey was assigned to work with two other inmates Jesse Anderson and Christopher Scarver. When the guards returned, they found Jeffrey and Jesse had been brutally beaten by Christopher. Christopher used a metal bar from the prison weight room. Approximately one hour after the incident Jeffrey died, Jesse also died days later from his injuries.

20 Years after Jeffrey was beaten to death Christopher spoke for the first time as to why he killed Jeffrey. Christopher said that Jeffrey worked on his nerves, he would make severed limbs out of his prison food and drizzle ketchup over the food and taunt other prisoners. He said that Jeffrey always had a personal guard with him at all times because of Jeffrey’s friction with other prisoners.

Christopher said he never interacted with Jeffrey as he did not want to become a victim of Jeffrey’s sickening humor. The morning when Christopher killed Jeffrey, Christopher confronted Jeffrey about his killings and cannibalism. He showed Jeffrey one of the newspaper clippings he had in his pocket. Christopher asked him if he did kill all those boys and Jeffery answered yes. He was so disgusted by the discovery that he grabbed the metal bar, and with two swings he crushed Jeffrey’s skull. Christopher received two more life sentences on top of what he was already serving.

Interesting things you may not know about Jeffrey Dahmer

Jeffrey’s case propelled crime into the pop culture obsession to a new level, based on the record ratings of network interviews with Dahmer. There were talks of book deals for his father and the judge connected to the case.

Jeffrey’s estate was awarded to 11 of the victims’ families. The families had sued for damages. The families have stated that the reason was not for greed, but it did spark controversy. Jeffrey’s possessions were destroyed and buried in an undisclosed Illinois landfill.

A candlelight vigil was held on the 5^th August 1991 to celebrate the healing of the Milwaukee community. It was one of the biggest vigils with over 400 people attending, several community leaders, gay right activist and family members of Jeffrey’s victims. The family members were encouraged to talk about their feelings and the pain of what they went through.

The house where Jeffrey killed twelve of his victims; The Oxford Apartments 942 North 25^th Street were demolished in November 1992. The site has been vacant for a while and plans to convert the lot into a memorial garden, a playground, or new housing has all failed to materialize. I think people still have that memory of what Jeffrey had done in the building and to be connected to that may cause a sour outcome.

Jeffrey’s father Lionel is now retired and lived with his second wife Shari in Medina County, Ohio. They have refused to change their surname and professed their love for Jeffrey in spite of his crimes. Lionel wrote a book A Father’s Story and donated a portion of the proceeds to the victims’ families.

Jeffrey’s mother Joyce Flint died of cancer in November 2000. Jeffrey’s brother David changed his surname and lives in anonymity.

There were four movies about Jeffrey’s life. Jeffrey Dahmer: The Secret life it was released in 1993. Biographical film Dahmer it was released in 2002. Raising Dahmer was released in 2006. 2012 An independent documentary film Jeff was released.

Jeffrey’s life was featured on three television stations. Discovery Channel had an episode of his life. Investigation Channel also broadcast a documentary on his life in their documentary series called Most Evil. HLN broadcast an episode in 2017 that focused on his crimes as part of their investigative series How It Happened

4. John Wayne Gacy A.K.A America’s Killer Clown

John was born on 17^th March 1942 in Chicago, Illinois. He seemed like a likable guy, and nobody ever suspected him of being a

serial killer. Being charming and a pillar in the community, he got along with people easily. He was a Catholic and a businessman as well.

He had a construction company and was also active in the Democratic Party. John would hold street parties for the people in the area he lived in and dress as Pogo the clown to entertain the children. The devoted family man, hardworking and good Catholic is what John wanted people to see. Underneath the façade, he was a deprived serial killer with the worst urges that could not be satisfied by usual means.

A difficult childhood

He’s father John Senior was an auto repair machinist and World War 1 veteran; his mother was Marion Elaine Robinson and a homemaker. John had a difficult childhood, he was overweight and not into sports. His father was an alcoholic, and he physical abused John and his mother. John tried hard to get his father’s approval and make him proud, it seldom happened. At age four John’s father beat him with a leather belt because he accidentally rearranged the engine compartments that his father assembled.

John experienced alienation at school too. He was unable to play with the other children as he had a congenital heart condition. Later in life, he realized that he was attracted to men. When his father found out, he was belittled and told that he was weak. John’s mother tried to shield him from his father and other people as much as she could. She feels she failed him and was not strong enough.

Early career of this serial killer

John dropped out of high school, and because of that, he struggled to get work. He went to Nevada Las Vegas. He found a job within the ambulance services, after a while they transferred him.

Gacy worked at the funeral home as a janitor and a mortuary assistant. He worked there for three months until he had enough money to return home to Chicago.

John’s mother and sister were very happy to see him. He found it difficult to find another job and decided to enroll in a business school. It became apparent that he was a good salesman and excelled in his first post-graduate job. He worked for a Footwear company in Springfield, Illinois. The position was Management Trainee.

John became involved in a lot of community projects where he would dress as a clown and entertain sick children in the hospital. It seemed that he turned his life around and started to make a success of his life. That statement is short live as his killing spree started not long after this.

John married one of his co-workers Marlynn Meyers in September 1964. John’s father in law offered him a position in one of the fast food chains he owned. John and his wife Marlynn moved to Iowa. John seemed to live the American dream with a nice job, a good wife and two children a boy and a girl.

The True John Gacy emerges

John started to do community work with the organization called Jaycee, there were even talks of becoming the president for Jaycee. There were stories that were floating in the air that John made sexual passes at some of the young men who worked in the restaurants. The people that knew and loved him brushed off the allegations as they say people are jealous of his wonderful life.

The rumors were true, and in May 1986, John was convicted and received a ten-year sentence for sexually assaulting two teen boys. One of the boys Mark Miller told the Grand Jury of Black Hawk County that John tricked him while he visited his home and tied him up and raped him. John denied the allegations, but he did mention that Mark had sex with him to earn extra money. Four months after the incident, there was another charge filed against John. An eighteen-year-old boy Dwight Anderson said John hired him to beat up Mark Miller.

Before the trail began, a judge ordered John to undergo a psychiatric evaluation to see if he was mentally stable to stand trial. John was found competent to stand trial they did say that John suffered from antisocial personality. But he would not benefit from any medical treatment. John entered a plea of guilty of sodomy. He received a ten-year sentence and entered the jail at the age of 26.

A while after John was sentenced his wife left him as she said he violated their wedding vows. It was the last time that John would see his children. His wife took their children with her and never returned. John was a model prisoner, and he was paroled on 18 June 1970, after only eighteen months.

A new beginning

John went back to Chicago and moved in with his mother. His mother felt proud as her son was doing so good, and bought him a ranch-style house just outside of Chicago. The house was located at 8213 West Summerdale Avenue in Norwood Township. His mother still owned 50% of the house. John adapted well after his stint in jail, and he got a job as a chef in a restaurant.

It was later discovered that John first known killing was in 1972. He killed a boy called Timothy McCoy after he lured him to his house.

After John had settled in his new house, he made friends with the neighbors and had another brush with the law. The boy claimed that John forced him to perform sexual acts, the charges were dropped as the boy did not appear in court.

John met and married his second wife Carole Lofgren on June 1972. Carole was recently divorced with two children. She fell in love with his charm and generosity.

John’s house was open for his neighbors all the time as he threw house parties. One of his regular guests and neighbor Lillie Grexa was convinced that something had died in his house.

There was a horrible smell that came from the bottom of the house and it went through the whole house. Several people would remark on the stench and told him that he must take care of the problem.

John’s neighbors thought it was a dead animal. John told his neighbors that it was moist build up in the crawl space underneath the house and kept his secret for several years to come.

Full Killing Momentum

John started a contracting business in 1974, which provided him with young men to satisfy his needs. The business was called Painting, Decorating and Maintenance or PDM Contractors Inc. for short. At this stage, it was difficult to keep his true nature to himself, and he started to have problems in his marriage.

John and his wife were estranged in 1975 because of his violent mood swings. They did not have a sex life anymore, and he had difficulty sleeping which made his mood swings worse. His wife became concerned as not only had his personality changed, but he also had new and disturbing reading material. She found magazines with naked men, and when she confronted him about it he admitted that it was his. He told his wife that he preferred men over women. His wife felt that she was not wanted anymore and therefore she filed for divorce and it became final on the 2^nd March 1976.

John was successful in his political career as he became involved in the Democratic Party’s election. He impressed the party officials and was promoted to a local commission. John had dreams of someday running for public office. He did not lack any of the personality traits to be in office but, his sexual preference squashed his dreams.

There was an incident while John worked for the Democratic Party where he made sexual advances towards a 16-year-old boy Tony Antonucci that worked on a project for John. Tony claimed that he visited John’s house and John tricked him into handcuffs and tried to undress him. He said that he made sure that the cuffs were loose enough, he then wrestles John and put the cuffs on John and Tony released the cuffs after John promised never to bother him again. Tony continued to work for John’s company for about a year after the incident.

John hired a seventeen-year-old boy named Johnny Butkovich to do remodeling for him. Jonny wanted a job to raise money for his racing car. Johnny enjoyed working for John and had a good working relationship with him.

One day John refused to pay Johnny’s pay of two weeks, which John did frequently to save money. Outraged about the situation Johnny went to his employer’s house with two of his friends. After a loud argument and a flat refusal from John, there was nothing Johnny could do about it and left with his friends. Johnny dropped his friends at their homes and was never seen again.

Another one of John’s victims was Michael Bonnin he was seventeen year old and loved to works with his hands. Michael almost restored an old antique jukebox but never got to finish it. He was on his way to catch a train when he vanished.

A trouble maker that had his first brush with the authorities at age 9 was Billy Caroll, sixteen years old. Billy spent most of his time on the streets of Chicago and was a pimp between young men and adult men. Billy left home on June 13^th of 1976 and was never seen again. He might have been a trouble maker but did not deserve whatever Gacy had in mind.

Another one of John’s employees Gregory Godzik, seventeen years of age. Gregory started working at PDM Contractors to finance parts for his 1996 Pontiac. Gregory enjoyed working for PDM Contractors, and the job paid well. On the evening of 12 December 1976 he dropped off his date at her house. Since then nobody has ever never seen him again. The police did find his car but, never recovered his body.

John was famous for his parties, and on one such occasion on the 2^nd December 1978 at a pre-Christmas party. There was a well-known local fortune teller at the party named Florence Branson. Florence was hired to entertain guests by reading their fortune in the cards. Everyone enjoyed the party and the readings. By the end of the evening, it was John’s turn for reading, and nobody knew then, but that reading would turn out to be a chilling prediction of events to come.

Florence said that when John started talking to her, she knew that something was wrong with him. She said when she laid out John’s cards she became physical ill. Florence never gave any details about the cards and bluffed her way through the reading as it was too evil to say anything about it. Florence felt compelled to say something about John. She went to the hostess of the party and told her that she was scared of John and that he was perverted and violent. The hostess told Florence that she refused to believe bad things about him. He is a family friend of several years. Florence was not surprised to learn of the killings and rapes committed by John weeks after the party. She felt it the night of the party, and nobody believed her.

Caught, caged and executed

Another boy went missing days after the party on the 11 December 1978. Robert Piest worked for John and disappeared after his mother reported that Robert went to see John about a summer job. He was just fifteen years old.

Robert was an ambitious, intelligent and standout gymnast. He was close to his family and was not a type of child that would run away from home without telling his family. This would also be the fall and last killing for John. Because the police knew where he went, they started their investigation with John, his employer.

The police started to go back in John’s life and saw that he was convicted of sodomy of a 15-year-old boy, ten years previously. The police started an intensive investigation, and on December 21, 1978, he was arrested.

Now at least he cannot kill anyone anymore. A police search of John’s house in Norwood Park, Illinois, uncovered horrible acts. The majority of John’s victims was buried under his house’s, garage. Some of his victims were recovered from the nearby Des Plaines River.

John insisted that he had nothing to do with Robert’s disappearance. The police finally broke the horrible man down where he started to confess his murders of 33 young boys and what he did to his victims.

John would tell police he would put a sock or some of the underwear of the victims in their mouths to muffle their screams. He put a rope or board against their throats while he raped them. John would sometimes put on his clown outfit while he performed horrible acts on his victims. He told the police that he would sometimes keep a corpse under his bed for days before disposing of the body.

John’s trial started on 6^th February 1980, and because he confessed to the crimes the trail was about whether he was completely insane. He was admitted to a mental facility. John told the police that the murders was committed by an alternate personality. Mental professionals felt that John was in complete control and knew what he did.

The jury only took 5 hours to deliver a guilty verdict. On May 1994, John was sentenced to serve 12 death sentences and 21 natural sentences. He was imprisoned for almost a decade at Menard Correctional Centre. John kept on appealing his sentence and offering contradictory statements on the murders in interviews.

John later went so far and said that he was not guilty of any of the murders. I think he knew what he had done and he did not have remorse or felt sorry for what he did. In fact, I think he enjoyed the killings and the rape. He could not hide the fact that it was enjoyable to him.

He took up visual art, and some of his paintings were shown to the public at an exhibition at a Chicago Gallery. His last meal consisted of a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken, a dozen shrimp, French fries, fresh strawberries and a diet Coke. Hours before his execution a thousand people gathered outside of the correctional center, the majority of the people were for his execution.

John died by lethal injection on 10 May 1994 at the Stateville Correctional Centre in Crest Hill, Illinois.

Interesting facts about John Wayne Casey

When they declared him dead his brain was removed and given to a doctor Helen Morrison, she wanted his brain to isolate common personality traits of violent sociopaths.

In June 1994 there was a communal bonfire held in Naperville Illinois to destroyed most of John’s art work. There were 300 people including family members of nine of John’s victims.

John’s house was destroyed in 1979.For years it was just an empty, barren lot, and strangely enough, the grass never grew back. After a couple of years someone bought the lot and built a new house, the new owners even changed the physical address of the location so that the stigma could be removed.

Numerous times it came up that John had accomplices that killed with him. One of John’s first questions that he asked the police was have you arrested my associates. He confessed to the police that he had accomplices who were directly involved in the killings. He never did reveal any names and police could find no definitive proof of anyone that worked with him.

While married John engaged in wife swapping, pornography and affairs with other women and men.

John’s last words were “kiss my ass” and that killing him would not compensate for all the people he killed, and that the state is going to kill him in the same way he killed all his victims.

While he was executed the chemical that was used for the injection solidified, clogging his IV tube. They had to close the blinds to replace the tube. Ten minutes later they opened the blinds again, and he was executed.

John’s crimes helped to create the Missing Child Recovery Act in 1984 known today as the Amber Alert so that the police can immediately start looking for missing children. Illinois was the first to use the system as other countries soon followed suit.

There were six movies made of John’s life and crimes, ten books, and four television stories.

5. Jane Toppan A.K.A The Nightmare Nurse

We have seen a profound number of people who kill and what they did to other people. Jane is a prolific serial killer in which she confessed to killing 33 people. Jane had a rough life growing up.

She manages to turn a bad life situation into something positive and noble. And most likely she became a nurse because of her background. To me, it is the worst kind of serial killing as people trust you completely if you are a doctor or nurse. Most people believe what you tell them as a nurse or doctor and you have life and death in your hands. Jane decided to choose the wrong path, and she felt power instead of compassion.

A pretty bad start

Jane Toppan was born Honora Kelly on 1857 in Boston, Massachusetts. Her parents were Irish immigrants. Her mother Bridget Kelly died of tuberculosis when Jane was an infant. It was down to her alcoholic father Peter Kelly to raise her and her three other siblings. Her father was known by most as crackpot Kelly. Did the poor children never stand a chance of a normal happy family life? Well as it turned out they did not and was raised in an abusive household. Her father was so crazy that he tries to sew his eyelids closed while working as a tailor.

After living in poverty for a few years, her father Peter did what he thought was best and sent Jane and her other sister Delia to the Boston Female Asylum that was designed to care for indigent girls in the year of 1863.

After Jane and her sister were admitted to the orphanage, the managers of the Asylum said that it was the best thing that happened to them as they escaped a miserable home.

Jane lived in the Boston Female Asylum for a few years and got adopted by Mrs. Ann Toppan. That is where Jane got her new identity and her new start to a better life. In school, Jane was talkative and become overbearing at times. She turned into a bad liar always telling unbelievable stories about her family telling people that they were famous. Also what they had accomplished in life that made them great. When people did not acknowledge her, she would spread vile stories about them until they took notice of her. She would put the blame of wrongdoing on someone else in her class usually someone she envied to avert the attentions of her wrong doings.

Jane was jealous of her beautiful foster sister Elizabeth. And she felt that she could never be as popular and beautiful as Elizabeth. She blamed Elizabeth for her inability to have friends and be in the popular crowd. When Elizabeth became the wife of a respectable deacon, Jane became addicted to reading cheap romantic novels.  She escaped into a made up world. She felt like a maid and not worthy to be around Elizabeth and the popular crowds.

Ann Toppan passed away when Jane was in her early 20’s. When the will was read everything Ann owned including the house that Jane lived in was left for Elizabeth. That made Jane felt even more left out and alone. Elizabeth and her husband decided to move into the house. Jane continued to work for them as a servant for ten years.

The perfect training for this Serial killer

Jane moved out of the house in 1885 to become a nurse. She felt that that is the sign that nobody will marry her. Her profession only helped her act out the aggression that she had for so many years. First of all the alcoholic father then against the beautiful foster sister that got everything she ever wanted. And last Ann the woman who took her in that left her nothing that did not acknowledge her as part of the family.

Jane becomes a student nurse at the Cambridge Hospital. The training was hard but if you succeed you were guaranteed a job. Jane found the training easy as it was not far from the life that she left behind as a servant. She was convincing enough to her superiors that she had what it takes to be a nurse.

Jane worked at a facility that was low in supervision and security. Jane would manipulate the charts of patients she did not like. Giving them different medicine so they could get sicker and not go home. She learned about different poisons and medicine and the effect it would have on the human body.

To fully understand the effects of poisons on the human body she decided that she would inject her patients with the poisons and medicines. She disliked the older people. That helped her to choose her victims. She was merciless and often referred to herself as the angel of death.

Jane would kill her patients with Morphine and Atropine. She would later say that she overdosed her patients using their drinks. Sometimes she would even lie next to them while they are dying. She would caress and cuddle with the dying patient; it was an intoxicating and sexual experience for her. She would sedate her patients so that they are immobilized while she climbed into bed with them and then abuse them sexually. I think the sexual abuse stem from the fact that she did not feel she was attractive enough to have a relationship and the only way she could feel loved was by immobilizing her “lovers” so that she was in full control of the situation.

Sexual desires motivated Jane’s killings. Killing in such a way is an uncommon motive. While Jane was killing her patient’s nobody suspected anything. She got away with 12 murders while doing her residency.

Jane was known as Jolly Jane; she would be so happy around her patients and careful with them. A lot of her peers said that she had great skills as she spent so much time with her patients. Her fellow medical professionals had no idea about the chilling things she did behind closed doors. She had letters of recommendations from the physicians she worked with. They were so impressed with her skills she was transferred in 1889 to the prestigious Massachusetts General Hospital.

Jane did not fit in with her new colleagues. They said that she was untrustworthy and despicable. Jane did not like the way her colleagues treated her. She came from a life where everybody looked down on her, and she wanted to be in charge of her life for once. They suspected that she was stealing from the other nurses. Also, she ignored dosage rules and overdosed a lot of the patients. Because of her recommendations, a lot of the doctors supported her. If it weren’t for them, she would have been discharged from the hospital.

Jane passed her final exam and signed for her diploma, but she did not receive her nursing license as she mostly ignored rules and felt that she was untouchable and could do whatever she wanted.

Private victims

After Jane had left Massachusetts General Hospital, she worked as a private nurse for a year. She decided to try one last time to get her nursing license. Jane impressed the doctors with her skills, and it was a good time for her to go back to killing the patients. However, her time would run out even though she impressed the right people. There were rumors about her. While she thought she was untouchable, she was soon to be proved wrong. One doctor would end her career in the hospital as he took the rumor about Jane to the board of the hospital. He told the board that she was reckless in administering medicine to the patients. The unusually high fatally rate of patients was another tip-off.

Jane moved into private practice in 1891. She had no problem getting jobs with the elite households as she had lots of recommendations from good doctors. There was no supervision which gave Jane the opportunity to fulfill her life’s mission she. That mission was to have murdered more people than any other serail killer in history.

In eight years Jane has become the most popular nurse in Cambridge in the private sector. Even though people was concerned that she was stealing from their homes, she still kept steady jobs, as she was dedicated, cheerful and confident.

Her constant lies and stealing come from her poor upbringing; she did show a high level of competence in her nursing. I think in a way she did like the nursing and to be part of a community. People saw more than just a servant, and she felt good about it. It would only be natural for her to flaunt her ability to care for the sick and the elderly, what people did not know was behind the façade of goodness lies the sick face of a serial killer. Jane managed to alienate households servants. If they became too much of a threat, they would be at the risk of ending up dead as well.

Sister Dear Sister how I hate thee

Jane would visit her foster sister Elizabeth and her husband for days at a time. Jane would play the loving, caring sister while she raged inside with so much jealousy and hatred for Elizabeth. Since Jane and Elizabeth have bonded, Jane invited Elizabeth for a vacation in Cape Cod in the August of 1899.  Elizabeth was fine the first day of the holiday, but by the second day she fell ill and died. The doctor told Elizabeth’s husband that she died of a stroke. Jane later confessed that Elizabeth was the only person she killed out of hate and vindictiveness. She told the police that she watches with delight as the life went out of Elizabeth.

Jane never had any friends, and would soon reveal her dark side to her patients and their families. She would make crude remarks about the families that were drenched in jealousy and resentment. One can only keep up the nice façade for a while, and she became tired of being the nice, caring person everyone thought she was.

I will be with you to the end my dear friend

Jane did have one friend that somehow did not care how she was as a person; her name was Myra Connors.

Myra became ill in the early months of 1900, and Jane came to help her. In days Myra took a turn for the worse and had painful convulsions and died. Before Myra became ill she was a dining hall matron at the Theological School in Cambridge a job that Jane wanted. She was jealous of Myra as the job included a free apartment and the opportunity to oversee all the food the students would eat. For a serial killer such as Jane that would be a dream come true as she could live out her passion in killing masses. After her only friend’s funeral, she talked to the dean and managed to get the job. Thankfully her time at the University lasted only one semester. She was fired for her poor performance and stealing money that was meant for her staff.

Jane was furious about her dismissal and went back to the town where she killed Elizabeth. There Jane’s killing career was discovered in 1901.

Back home once more

A small town called Cataumet in Cape Cod. In the summer month, Jane rented a cottage in town from Alden and Mattie Davis. Jane did not pay rent, and Mattie came to talk to her about the matter. Mattie was on her way to visit her daughter in Cambridge, but she first went to Jane. She never received the rent money, and Jane poisoned her with morphine in her mineral water and did so over the course of a week.

Mattie died on the seventh day of the ordeal. No one knows if Mattie had any idea of what was going on before Jane murdered her. Jane’s plan was to kill the whole Davis family. She managed to worm her way into the family. After the funeral of Mattie, the family decided that Jane should move into their home. Jane’s first attempt to murder the rest of the Davis family was to set three different fires in their home. She was unsuccessful and turned to the one thing that she knows the best and that was to poison them. She was successfully poisoning.

Jane thought to herself why stop here? She’s killing and loving it, and nobody suspectss anything. After a few weeks, she moves back to her hometown and starts a relationship with her late foster sister’s husband, Oramel. Jane then killed his 72-year-old sister and poisoning him too so that she can prove she can nurse him back to health. Jane even went so far as to poison herself to get sympathy from him. Her efforts did not work, and he threw her out of his house.

Discovery of the monster and the trial

One of the Davis family members did not believe what the doctor said about the family’s deaths. It was pointed out that all of the deaths had one person in common and that is Jane. They started to investigate the deaths of the Davis family, and they exhumed the bodies to check for poison.

Jane was unaware of the investigation and that she was under surveillance. Before she was arrested, she was visiting a friend in Amherst, New Hampshire. October the toxicology report came back, and they found poison in the bodies of the Davis sisters, they arrested Jane for murder.

While Jane was in prison awaiting trail the news of her arrest was on the news. Soon patients that she treated came forward and said that they though she tried to poison them and the police started to unravel Jane’s life.

Jane’s trail started in 1902; a grand jury indicted her for the murders of the Davis family. Jane’s lawyers took the insanity route, and Jane went to see a renowned Boston psychiatrist Dr. Henry Stedman. During one of the sessions, Jane had with Henry she calmly remarked that she killed 31 people which she claims was all her friends. She had no remorse about the murders.

Jane admitted to setting the fires and how she killed her victims by overdosing them with morphine. Jane also said that she got sexually aroused by lying in bed with the victims while they are dying.

It is said that she got her insanity from her father and sister and therefore the verdict was not guilty by reason of insanity. Now, this is only my observation but how can someone who function on a daily basis, travel have friends and a job be so mentally insane that they are found not guilty?  People might not agree with me, but I did think she knew what she did, and my verdict would have been to give her the death sentence. She was to live the rest of her life in the Taunton Insane Hospital.

A news reporter from the New York Journal spoke to Jane after the trail. She told him that she made the doctor think that she was insane that she could be released one day. Her plan failed, she died in 1938 at the age of 84.

Interesting facts about Jane Toppan

While Jane was in nursing school she attended autopsies, she enjoyed it and could not wait for the next one. One of her classmates remarked that she had an obsession with death.

Jane attempted suicide multiple times in her lifetime the earliest attempt dated back before she was 20 years old. She hides her suicide attempts from the nursing school, and although she was mentally unstable, they still accepted her.

While she was in the mental hospital, she told the reporters that if she had married and had children, she would never have killed. I guess she figured she is already a nurse and it is quicker for her to murder than to work on a relationship.

Sources

Ted Bundy
http://criminalminds.wikia.com/wiki/Ted_Bundy
http://www.crimemuseum.org/crime-library/ted-bundy/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Bundy
http://www.biography.com/people/ted-bundy-9231165
http://www.the-line-up.com/ted-bundy-twisted-confessions/
http://crimefeed.com/2015/06/6-facts-ted-bundy-every-bundyphile-know/
https://www.thoughtco.com/ted-bundy-gets-caught-973179
http://www.pureintimacy.org/f/fatal-addiction-ted-bundys-final-interview
Book: Profile Of A Criminal Mind by Brian Innes

Jeffrey Dahmer
http://www.crimemuseum.org/crime-library/jeffrey-dahmer/
http://nypost.com/2015/04/28/meet-the-prisoner-who-murdered-killer-cannibal-jeffrey-dahmer/
http://www.ranker.com/list/twisted-jeffrey-dahmer-crimes/amandasedlakhevener
http://edition.cnn.com/2015/04/30/us/feat-jeffrey-dahmer-killer-explanation/
http://time.com/4412621/jeffrey-dahmer-cannibal-murderer-25th-anniversary-arrest/
http://www.biography.com/people/jeffrey-dahmer-9264755
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Dahmer

John Gacy
http://thelistlove.com/10-facts-about-the-killer-clown-john-wayne-gacy/
http://www.crimeandinvestigation.co.uk/crime-files/john-wayne-gacy-killer-clown
http://www.prairieghosts.com/gacy.html
http://www.biography.com/people/john-wayne-gacy-10367544
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Wayne_Gacy

Jane Toppan
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Toppan
http://murderpedia.org/female.T/t/toppan-jane.htm
http://womenserialkillers.blogspot.co.za/2011/02/jane-toppan-nightmare-nurse.html
https://www.thoughtco.com/serial-killer-nurse-jane-toppan-973142
http://unknownmisandry.blogspot.co.za/2011/09/jane-toppan-massachusetts-serial-killer.html