11 Horrifying Killers You’ve Probably Never Heard Of
1. THE KIDS WHO KIDNAPPED AND KILLED ANOTHER KID
“The James Bulger story. In, 1993, Robert Thompson and Jon Venables beat two-year-old James Bulger to death. Thompson and Venables were 10 at the time.”
From Wikipedia:
James Patrick Bulger (16 March 1990 – 12 February 1993) was a boy from Kirkby, Merseyside, England, who was murdered on 12 February 1993, at the age of two. He was abducted, tortured and killed by two ten-year-old boys, Robert Thompson (born 23 August 1982) and Jon Venables (born 13 August 1982). Bulger was led away from the New Strand Shopping Centre in Bootle whilst his mother was distracted. His mutilated body was found on a railway line two-and-a-half miles (4 km) away in Walton, Liverpool, two days after his murder…. Thompson and Venables took Bulger on a meandering 2.5-mile (4 km) walk across Liverpool to the Leeds and Liverpool Canal where he was dropped on his head and suffered injuries to his face. The boys joked about pushing Bulger into the canal. During the walk across Liverpool, the boys were seen by 38 people.
Bulger had a bump on his forehead and was crying, but most bystanders did nothing to intervene…Finally, a 22-pound (10.0 kg) iron bar, described in court as a railway fishplate, was dropped on Bulger. He sustained 10 skull fractures as a result of the bar striking his head. Dr Alan Williams, the case’s pathologist, stated that Bulger suffered so many injuries —42 in total— that none could be isolated as the fatal blow….After Bulger’s killers left the scene, his body was cut in half by a train.
2. THE DRACULA KILLER
“Serial Killer Richard Chase. Homeboy still gives me the creeps.”
From Wikipedia:
He was nicknamed “The Vampire of Sacramento” because he drank his victims’ blood and cannibalized their remains….He was once caught and chased off by a couple returning home as he pilfered their belongings; he had also urinated and defecated on their infant child’s bed and clothing….On January 23, 1978, Chase broke into a house and shot Teresa Wallin (three months pregnant at the time) three times. He then had sexual intercourse with her corpse while stabbing her with a butcher knife. He then removed multiple organs, cut off one of her nipples and drank her blood. He stuffed dog feces from Wallin’s yard down her throat before leaving.
3. THE ICEMAN
“In my abnormal psychology class, we spent a great deal of time talking about Richard Kuklinski, or ‘The Iceman.’ Basically the thing he did that stuck out to me the most is he would lock people, hog tied, in a cave and record them being eaten alive by rats.”
From Wikipedia:
American contract killer and serial killer who was convicted of murdering 6 people, although he claimed the number was over 100. He was associated with members of the American Mafia, namely the DeCavalcante crime family of Newark, New Jersey, and the Five Families of New York City. Kuklinski was given the nickname “The Iceman” for his method of freezing a victim to mask the time of death. During his criminal career, fellow mobsters called him “the one-man army” or “the devil himself” due to his fearsome reputation and imposing physique of 6’5″ (196 cm) and 270 pounds (122 kg).
4. THE TOY BOX KILLER
“David Parker Ray AKA The Toy Box Killer.”
From Wikipedia:
Though no bodies were found, he was accused by his accomplices of killing several people and suspected by police to have murdered as many as 60 people from Arizona and New Mexico, while living in Elephant Butte, New Mexico, approximately 7 miles north of Truth or Consequences. He soundproofed a truck trailer that he called his “toy box”, and equipped it with items used for sexual torture.
He would play a tape for his victims when he abducted them. This transcript would be the first thing they would hear when they woke up from their ether-induced sleep:
Hello there, bitch. Are you comfortable right now? I doubt it. Wrists and ankles chained. Gagged. Probably blindfolded. You are disoriented and scared, too, I would imagine. Perfectly normal, under the circumstances. For a little while, at least, you need to get your shit together and listen to this tape. It is very relevant to your situation.
I’m going to tell you, in detail, why you have been kidnapped, what’s going to happen to you and how long you’ll be here. I don’t know the details of your capture because this tape is being created July 23, 1993, as a general advisory tape for future female captives. The information I’m going to give you is based on my experience dealing with captives over a period of several years. If, at a future date, there are any major changes in our procedures, the tape will be upgraded.
5. THE BUTCHER BAKER
“Robert Hansen was a serial killer who would kidnap women, then release them in the woods in Alaska and hunt them with a rifle and knife. ”
From Wikipedia:
Between 1971 and 1983, Hansen abducted, raped and murdered at least 17, and possibly more than 30 women, in and around Anchorage, Alaska, hunting them down in the woods with a Ruger Mini-14 and other weapons….When confronted with the evidence found in his home, Hansen denied it as long as he could but he eventually began to blame the women and tried to justify his motives. Eventually, confessing to each item of evidence as it was presented to him, he admitted to a spree of attacks against Alaskan women starting in 1971. Hansen’s earliest victims were young women, usually between 16 and 19 and not the prostitutes and strippers who led to his discovery.
6. THE TORTURE DOCTOR
“H. H. Holmes.”
From Wikipedia:
While he confessed to 27 murders, only nine could be plausibly confirmed and several of the people whom he claimed to have murdered were still alive. He is commonly said to have killed as many as 200, though this figure is only traceable to 1940s pulp magazines. Many victims were said to have been killed in a mixed-use building which he owned, located about 3 miles (4.8 km) west of the 1893 World’s Fair: Columbian Exposition, supposedly called the World’s Fair Hotel (informally called “The Murder Hotel”), though evidence suggests that the hotel portion was never truly open for business.
7. THE TOOLBOX KILLERS
“The Lawrence Bittaker and Roy Norris article, mainly this:
The audio tape Bittaker and Norris created of themselves raping and torturing Shirley Lynette Ledford remains in the possession of the FBI Academy. The audio cassette is now used to train and desensitize FBI agents to the raw reality of torture and murder.
It’s not exactly the article itself, but said audio is truly nightmare stuff. After listening to it for morbid curiosity, I felt bad for weeks with such cruelty.”
8. THE MCDONALD’S KILLER
“The McDonald’s massacre is so unnecessarily detailed and depressing it’s a must-read.”
From Wikipedia:
The San Ysidro McDonald’s massacre was a mass shooting that occurred in and around a McDonald’s restaurant in the San Diego neighborhood of San Ysidro on July 18, 1984. The perpetrator, 41-year-old James Huberty, shot and killed 21 people and injured 19 others before being fatally shot by a SWAT team sniper.
9. THE TRUCK STOP KILLER
“Just listened to a podcast about The Truck Stop Killer, Robert Ben Rhodes. He was a long-haul trucker who had a mobile torture chamber in his truck. It’s believed that he raped, tortured, and murdered 50 women over a fifteen-year period. One of which was a fourteen-year-old girl, who he strangled in a barn after keeping her in his truck for weeks. He even called and taunted her parents.”
From Wikipedia:
Robert Ben Rhoades (born November 22, 1945), also known as The Truck Stop Killer, is an American serial killer and rapist. He was convicted for three murders, and slated to be tried for two more before charges were dropped due to the wishes of victims’ families. He is believed to have tortured, raped, and killed more than 50 women between 1975 and 1990, based on data about his truck routes and women who went missing during those years and who met the profile of his preferred victims. At the time he was caught, he claimed to have engaged in these activities for 15 years.
10. THE SHOE FETISH KILLER
“Jerome ‘The Shoe Fetish Killer’ Brudos.
This story is particularly terrifying for me personally as one of my friends in middle/high school lived in Jerry Brudos’s old house. If you know Salem, OR, it is within line of sight of the Health Department and Juvenile Hall, and within one city block of Oregon State Hospital.
I learned about this story after playing Halo 2 into the wee hours of the morning. In the garage that was his “office” aka trophy room. The intercom was removed.
About Jerry himself: his victims were targets of opportunity, bodies were mutilated/raped/dismembered, and he wore the clothing of his victims later to masturbate in.
Even more terrifying? He attempted to get out on parole many times. He did die in jail, thank god.
Even more ridiculous was that he had a wife that never picked up on the multiple dead and dismembered women in her home in the year-ish that he was The Shoe Fetish Killer.”
From Wikipedia:
Jerome Henry “Jerry” Brudos (January 31, 1939 – March 28, 2006) was an American serial killer and necrophiliac who committed the murders of at least four women in Oregon between 1968 and 1969….Between 1968 and 1969, Brudos bludgeoned and strangled four young women and attempted to attack two others….Brudos would also dress up in high heels and masturbate after committing a murder.
11. THE MASTER BUTCHER
“Armin Meiwes. He cut off and deep fried someone’s penis and tried to eat it. And it was all consensual.”
From Wikipedia:
A German computer repair technician who achieved international notoriety for killing and eating a voluntary victim whom he had found via the Internet. After Meiwes and the victim jointly attempted to eat the victim’s severed penis, Meiwes killed his victim and proceeded to eat a large amount of his flesh….Brandes apparently tried to eat some of his own penis raw but could not, because it was too tough and, as he put it, “chewy”. Meiwes then fried the penis in a pan with salt, pepper, wine, and garlic; he then fried it with some of Brandes’ fat, but by then it was too burned to be consumed. He then chopped the penis up into chunks and fed it to his dog.