List of serial killers
List by country
Australia
- Edward Joseph Leonski, the "singing strangler" killed at least 4
- Ivan Robert Marko Milat, the "backpack-murderer" killed at least 7 tourists
Belgium
- Marc Dutroux - Belgian child molester and killer
Brazil
- Francisco de Assis Pereira, Brazilian serial killer, known as the maniaco do parque (the park maniac)
Canada
- Paul Bernardo, Canada's most famous serial killer, who killed two teenage school girls, with his wife Karla Homolka, and was also known as the Scarborough Rapist
Colombia
- Pedro Lopez - Colombia, with 300 victims
France
- Michel Fourniret
- Henri Désiré Landru
- Émile Louis - preyed on young handicapped women
- Gilles de Rais - (d. 1440), French demonolator and child-killer
Germany
- Karl Denke
- Karl Grossmann
- Fritz Haarmann
- Joachim Georg Kroll
- Peter Kürten
Hungary
- Erzsébet Báthory, believed to have killed 600 victims
- Bela Kiss
India
- Charles Sobhraj, who preyed on Western tourists in Southeast Asia in the 1970s
Japan
- Tsutomu Miyazaki - the "Otaku Killer", killed 4 preschool-age Japanese girls
Mexico
- Abdul Latif Sharif - Egyptian alleged to be responsible for dozens of murders in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico
Pakistan
- Javed Iqbal, killed 100 boys in Pakistan
Poland
Romania
- Vera Renczi - The 35 bodies in her cellar may have influenced the writing of Joseph Kesselring's Arsenic and Old Lace
Russia
- Lavrenty Beria, (1899 - 1953) Russian official and alleged serial killer
- Andrei Chikatilo
UK
- Beverley Allitt - The Angel Of Death. Paediatric nurse who killed 13 patients and injured others in 1991
- Robert Black - schoolgirl killer
- Ian Brady - one of the Moors Murderers, with Myra Hindley
- John Childs - burned the bodies of his six victims, jailed 1980
- John Christie - the necrophile, who lived at 10 Rillington Place
- Mary Ann Cotton - British Victorian killer, said to have taken more than 20 victims
- Peter George Dinsdale - aka Bruce Lee, the prolific Hull arsonist
- Kenneth Erskine - The Stockwell Strangler, jailed in 1988 for murdering seven pensioners
- John George Haigh - The Acid Bath Murderer or Vampire of London
- Myra Hindley - (d. 2002) one of the Moors Murderers, with Ian Brady
- Colin Ireland - The Gay Slayer or Fairy Liquidator
- Patrick Mackay - confessed to killing 11 people
- Robert Mawdsley - serial killer of four. Killed three in prison and dubbed Hannibal the Cannibal
- Peter Moore - businessman who killed men at random in Wales.
- Donald Neilson - The Black Panther
- Dennis Nilsen - British serial killer of 15 (possibly 16)
- Mark Rowntree - 19 year old psychopath who killed 4 people at random
- Harold Frederick Shipman - British doctor convicted of 15 murders. A later inquiry stated he had killed at least 215 and possibly up to 457 people over a 25 year period
- Peter Sutcliffe - the Yorkshire Ripper
- Fred and Rose West - the House of Horrors murderers in Gloucester
- Graham Young - The Teacup Poisoner, (1947-1990) who killed three
Ukraine
- Anatoly Onoprienko - Ukrainian serial killer known as "the Terminator." Murdered 52 people from 1989 until his capture in 1996
USA
- David Berkowitz, known as the "Son of Sam"
- The Boston Strangler (allegedly Albert DeSalvo)
- Ted Bundy
- Dr. Thomas Neil Cream
- Jeffrey Dahmer
- Glennon Engleman - mediocre St. Louis dentist who shot and bombed his way to financial success
- Albert Fish
- John Wayne Gacy
- Ed Gein. Elements of Gein's life and crimes have inspired, at least in part The Silence of the Lambs, "Psycho, and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
- Hillside Strangler - actually two men, Kenneth Bianchi and Angelo Buono, Jr.
- Derrick Todd Lee, aka the Baton Rouge Serial Killer
- Eddie Leonski, the Brownout Strangler
- Henry Lee Lucas
- Peter Moore - Kimnel Bay serial killer
- Herman Mudgett, aka Dr. H. H. Holmes, "the serial killer of Murder Castle", active 1890-1894, during Chicago's 1893 World Columbian Exposition.
- Herbert Mullin
- Earle Nelson- Necrophiliac serial killer dubbed "Gorilla Man"
- Jesse Pomeroy
- Dorothea Puente
- Richard Ramirez
- Angel Maturino Resendiz - Killed 9 people in Texas, Kentucky, and Illinois
- Gary Ridgway - arrested in November, 2001 for The Green River Killer murders
- John Edward Robinson - United States
- Danny Rolling
- Charles Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate, "Natural Born Killers"
- Otis Toole
- Jane Toppan
- Coral Eugene Watts - eligible for parole in 2006
- Wayne Williams - convicted of the Atlanta Child Murders
- Aileen Wuornos - Florida
Currently On Trial
- Robert Pickton on trial in British Columbia accused in the deaths of 15 women and suspected in up to 54.
- Greg Westann currently on trial in Myanmar for the killing of 14 black women.
Unidentified serial killers
- The Axeman of New Orleans (USA)
- the BTK killer (USA)
- Bible John (UK)
- The Cleveland Torso Murderer, aka "The Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run" (USA)
- Jack the Ripper, aka "The Whitechapel Murderer" (UK)
- Jack the Stripper (UK)
- The Zodiac Killer (USA)
For the Unabomber, Theodore Kaczynski, see List of terrorist incidents.