The Zodiac Killer was a serial killer who operated in Northern California in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The killer’s identity remains unknown. The killer originated the name “Zodiac” in a series of taunting letters sent to the local Bay Area press. These letters included four cryptograms (or ciphers). Of the four cryptograms sent, only one has been confirmed to have been decoded.

(Source: fuckyeahoddities)

12:32 pm  •  8 December 2011  •  40 notes

William George Heirens (born November 15, 1928) is a convicted American serial killer who confessed to three murders in 1946.
Heirens has been called The Lipstick Killer due to a notorious message scrawled in lipstick at a crime scene. He is reputedly the world’s longest serving prisoner, having thus far spent 65 years in prison.

12:47 pm  •  3 December 2011  •  120 notes

The Cleveland Torso Murderer (also known as the Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run) was an unidentified serial killer who killed and dismembered at least 12 victims in the Cleveland, Ohio area in the 1930s.

The Torso Murderer always beheaded and often dismembered his victims, sometimes also cutting the torso in half; in many cases the cause of death was the decapitation itself. Most of the male victims were castrated, and some victims showed evidence of chemical treatment being applied to their bodies. Many of the victims were found after a considerable period of time following their deaths, sometimes a year or more. This made identification nearly impossible, especially since the heads were often not found.

12:40 pm  •  11 October 2011  •  67 notes

Kenneth Erskine is an English serial killer who became known as the Stockwell Strangler. During 1986, Erskine murdered seven elderly people, breaking into their homes and strangling them; most often they were sexually assaulted. The crimes took place in London. A homeless drifter and solvent abuser, Erskine was 24 years old when he committed the crimes, but had the mental age of a 12-year-old. Police suspected Erskine of four others murders but Erskine has never been charged with any of these murders. Erskine was sentenced to life imprisonment with a recommended minimum term of 40 years, but has since been found to be suffering from mental disorder within the meaning of the Mental Health Act 1983, and is therefore now held at Broadmoor. He is unlikely to be freed until at least 2028 and the age of 66. Some 20 years later, the trial judge’s recommendation is still one of the heaviest ever handed out in British legal history.

In February 1996, Erskine was again in the news, this time for preventing the possible murder of Peter Sutcliffe (see below), by raising the alarm as a fellow inmate, Paul Wilson, attempted to strangle Sutcliffe with the flex from a pair of stereo headphones.

(Source: listverse.com)

8:06 pm  •  23 July 2011  •  3 notes

Between 1988 and 1989, Tsutomu Miyazaki mutilated and killed four girls, aged between four and seven, and sexually molested their corpses. He drank the blood of one victim and ate a part of her hand. These crimes—which, prior to Miyazaki’s apprehension and trial were named “The Little Girl Murders”, and later known as the Tokyo/Saitama Serial Kidnapping Murders of Little Girls shocked Saitama Prefecture, which had few crimes against children.

During the day, Miyazaki was a mild-mannered employee. Outside of work, he randomly selected children to kill. He terrorized the families of his victims, sending them letters recalling in graphic detail what he had done to their children. To the family of victim Erika Nanba, Miyazaki sent a morbid postcard assembled using words cut out of magazines: “Erika. Cold. Cough. Throat. Rest. Death.”

He allowed the corpse of his first victim, Mari Konno, to decompose in the hills near his home, then chopped off the hands and feet, which he kept in his closet. They were recovered upon his arrest. He charred her remaining bones in his furnace, ground them into powder, and sent them to her family in a box, along with several of her teeth, photos of her clothes, and a postcard reading: “Mari. Cremated. Bones. Investigate. Prove.”

Police found that the families of the victims had something else in common: all were bothered by silent nuisance phone calls. If they did not pick up the phone, it would sometimes ring for 20 minutes.

On July 23, 1989, Miyazaki attempted to insert a zoom lens into the vagina of a grade school-aged girl in a park near her home and was attacked by the girl’s grandfather. After fleeing naked on foot, Miyazaki eventually returned to the park to retrieve his Toyota car, whereupon he was promptly arrested by police who had responded to a call by the grandfather. A search of Miyazaki’s two-room bungalow turned up a collection of 5,763 videotapes, some containing anime and slasher films (later used as reasoning for his crimes). Interspersed among them was video footage and pictures of his victims. He was also reported to be a fan of horror films and had an extensive collection, with the centerpieces being the first five Guinea Pig films; he reportedly used the fourth film in the series as a template for one of his killings. Miyazaki, who retained a perpetually calm and collected demeanor during his trial, appeared indifferent to his capture.

Kunio Hatoyama signed his death warrant and Miyazaki was hanged on June 17, 2008.

(Source: Wikipedia)

12:30 pm  •  23 May 2011  •  22 notes

Robert Andrew Berdella also known as Kansas City Butcher was a serial killer who moved to a neighborhood in Kansas City where he tortured, mutilated and killed at least six men. A house where his acts took place still stands on 4315 Charlotte Ave, but there’s  no information on whether anyone lives there today.

Towards his late 20′s, Robert Andrew Berdella got to be very open about his homosexuality and opened a “Bob’s Bazaar Bizarre” shop at the Westport Flea Market. The shop specialized in selling any items generally regarded as “bizarre”, including human skulls, witchcraft and occult books, knives and swords, jewellery, and whatever else was bizarre enough to fit in.

By the time he was 33, Robert Andrew Berdella got involved with an unstable Vietnam veteran but the relationship didn’t work out very well so he started picking up male prostitutes. Many of them were allowed to live in his house in exchange for little help with housework and cuddles when the lights went out.

When he was 35, Robert Andrew Berdella found himself a favorite gay prostitute – 19 year old Jerry Howell. His previous sexual encounters contained heavy sodomy, but it was with Jerry Howell when he took it to a whole new level. He used animal tranquilizers to keep the victim drugged up, gagged and bound him against the bed so he could sodomize him repeatedly and take polaroid pictures of the progress.

Jerry Howell died from asphyxiation on July 6, 1984. Robert Andrew Berdella took him to the basement, hung him upside down and slit him open to drain all blood out of his dead body. Once bloodless, his body was dismembered and pieces stuffed in a garbage bag which he deposited outside his house just before the garbage truck showed up. Unaware, garbagemen picked up the bags and took them to the incineration site disposing of the evidence for good.

On April 10, 1985 Robert Andrew Berdella met Robert Sheldon whom he invited home and allowed to stay for a couple of days. Burning with desire to keep his new acquaintance, Bob drugged him up the same way he did with Jerry Howell before and repeatedly sodomized his live, but bound and gagged body.

Few days later, the roofman came to fix his roof so to avoid the roofman hearing the moaning of Robert Sheldon, Robert Andrew Berdella suffocated him with a plastic bag. Unlike he did with Howell, Sheldon’s body was sliced up in a bathtub to allow for blood drainage and the disposal ritual was a bit different too. The body was dismembered and stuffed in a garbage bag, but this time the butcher kept the head which he buried in the backyard.

Mark Wallace was hired to do some yard work for Berdella. When the storm came, young man went to hide in a shelter so Berdella invited him inside where he had him drugged, bound and gagged for ongoing sodomy. The death from asphyxiation came a few hours later so Barbella sliced him up and disposed of him the same way as with his previous victim.

Todd Stoops was a male prostitute Robert Andrew Berdella used to use prior to his KC Butcher days. When the two met again, Todd was invited in the house of horror but this time never to leave. He was tortured and sodomized for weeks before he died of blood loss and injuries sustained during mistreatment. The disposal was the same – the garbagemen just picked up his bags and threw them in.

When his friend Larry Pearson ended up in jail, Robert Andrew Berdella bailed him out and invited him to stay in his house. Needless to say, young fella was drugged and tortured for 6 weeks but managed to bite his tormentor’s penis on Aug 5, 1987. He was suffocated to death with a plastic bag and Robert Andrew Berdella had to go to the hospital for penile treatment. Because sodomy was nothing new, doctors did not suspect anything funny and just treated the patient. When Pearson’s body was disposed of, Berdella dug out the skull of Robert Sheldon to keep it in his closet.

Chris Bryson was to be his next victim. This male prostitute was taken to Berdella’s home, was drugged, handcuffed, gagged and sodomized for 5 days until one day, when Robert Andrew Berdella went to work (dude continued going to work while keeping his boyfriends tied up at home) he managed to set himself free by burning through the ropes that kept him tied up and ran out of the house wearing nothing but a dog collar.

The police initially didn’t make a big deal out of seeing a naked guy with a dog collar, given that the community was known for people practicing sodomy but when they got the details out of Chris Bryson, shit started hitting the fan.

Upon arrest, the police charged Robert Andrew Berdella with seven counts of sodomy, one count of felonious restraint and one count of first degree assault. His bail was set at $500,000, but upon careful evaluation of torture logs and pictures taken by the torturer himself, one police officer suspected murder and dug deeper into the situation.

Large scale investigation was launched which involved digging through the backyard which revealed buried skull of Larry Pearson. Dubbed the Butcher of Kansas City, Robert Andrew Berdella pled guilty to 1st degree murder in the death of Robert Sheldon and to 4 counts of 2nd degree murder involving his other male victims. He was sent to Jefferson City, Missouri with two life sentences with no parole and four life sentences with parole. After three and a half years in jail, Robert Andrew Berdella died of a heart attack.

(Source: bestgore.com)

12:30 pm  •  27 April 2011  •  14 notes

Richard Chase was born in Santa Clara County, California, on May 23, 1950. Known as the “Vampire of Sacramento”, he killed six people in the span of one month, cannibalizing their remains and drinking their blood. The product of a troubled household, Chase showed signs of psychological problems at an early age and, later, gained himself a reputation as an alcoholic and chronic drug user during his adolescence. He became obsessed with bodily fluids, once being hospitalized for blood poisoning due to injecting himself with rabbit’s blood.

He committed his first murder on December 29, 1977. He would prowl homes and enter if the door was unlocked, believing that a locked door was a sign that he was not wanted but an unlocked door was an invitation to enter. On January 27, he committed his last murder, slaying 38-year-old Evelyn Miroth, her six-year-old son, Jason, and her 22-month-old nephew, David. He engaged in necrophilia and cannibalism with Evelyn’s corpse. He also drank her son’s blood and ate several of his internal organs, including his brain. On May 8, 1979, he was found guilty of six counts of murder in the first degree and was sentence to die in the gas chamber. He was found dead in his prison cell on December 26, 1980, having committed suicide with doctor-prescribed anti-depressants that he had stored up over several weeks.

12:30 pm  •  10 March 2011  •  14 notes

Leonarda Cianciulli (November 14, 1893, Montella, Province of Avellino – October 15, 1970) was an Italian serial killer. Better known as the “Soap-Maker of Correggio”, she murdered three women in Correggio between 1939 and 1940, and turned their bodies into soap. Having been born the child of a rape, she led a sad childhood with a hateful mother. She attempted suicide twice. In 1914, she married a registry office clerk, Raffaele Pansardi, and moved to Lariano in Alta Irpinia. Their home was destroyed by an earthquake in 1930, and they moved once more, this time to Correggio, where Leonarda opened a small shop and became very popular as a nice, gentle woman, a doting mother and a nice neighbor. In 1939, Cianciulli heard that her eldest son, Giuseppe, was to join the Italian army in preparation for World War II. Giuseppe was her favorite child, and she was determined to protect him at all costs. She came to the conclusion that his safety required human sacrifices. She found her victims in three middle-aged women, all neighbors. After murdering her first victim with an axe she got rid of the body in this way (her own words):

“I threw the pieces into a pot, added seven kilos of caustic soda, which I had bought to make soap, and stirred the whole mixture until the pieces dissolved in a thick, dark mush that I poured into several buckets and emptied in a nearby septic tank. As for the blood in the basin, I waited until it had coagulated, dried it in the oven, ground it and mixed it with flour, sugar, chocolate, milk and eggs, as well as a bit of margarine, kneading all the ingredients together. I made lots of crunchy tea cakes and served them to the ladies who came to visit, though Giuseppe and I also ate them.”

Cianciulli’s second victim was killed in exactly the same manner. Her final victim, opera singer Virginia Cacioppo was killed in the same way but with one twist:

“She ended up in the pot, like the other two…her flesh was fat and white, when it had melted I added a bottle of cologne, and after a long time on the boil I was able to make some most acceptable creamy soap. I gave bars to neighbors and acquaintances. The cakes, too, were better: that woman was really sweet.”

Cianciulli was caught due to an eyewitness and found guilty of murder. She was sentenced to thirty years in jail where she died of a brain hemorrhage. More information (including an image of the tools she used) can be found here.

12:30 pm  •  8 March 2011  •  25 notes

Joseph Vacher was a French serial killer, sometimes known as “The French Ripper” due to comparisons to the more famous Jack the Ripper murderer of London, England, in 1888. His scarred face, accordion and plain, white, hand-made rabbit-fur hat became his trademark appearance. During a three-year period, beginning in 1894, Vacher murdered and mutilated at least 11 people (one woman, five teenage girls and five teenage boys). Many of them were shepherds watching their flocks in isolated fields. The victims were stabbed repeatedly, often disemboweled, raped and sodomized.

Vacher was a drifter, traveling from town to town, from Normandy to Provence, staying mainly in the southeast of France, and surviving by begging or working on farms as a day laborer. He was caught in 1897, whilst trying to murder a woman in the fields. He confessed to the murders, but claimed he was insane because he was bitten by a rabid dog when he was a child. He later changed his story and said he was a messenger of God. Vacher was executed by guillotine two months later, at dawn on December 31, 1898. He refused to walk towards the scaffold and had to be dragged by the executioners. 

The image above is his disembodied head.

12:30 pm  •  6 March 2011  •  13 notes

Thomas Cream was a doctor secretly specializing in abortions. He was born in Scotland, educated in London, active in Canada and later in Chicago, Illinois. In 1881, he was found to be responsible for fatally poisoning several of his patients of both sexes. Originally there was no suspicion of murder in these cases, but Cream himself demanded an examination of the bodies, apparently an attempt to draw attention to himself. Imprisoned in the Illinois State Penitentiary in Joliet, Illinois, he was released on 31 July, 1891, on good behavior. Moving to London, he resumed killing (mostly prostitutes) and was soon arrested. He was hanged on 15 November, 1892. According to the hangman, his last words were reported as being “I am Jack…”, interpreted to mean Jack the Ripper. He was allegedly imprisoned at the time of the Ripper murders, but some authors have suggested that he could have bribed officials and left the prison before his official release.

12:30 pm  •  4 March 2011  •  19 notes