The 7 most notorious serial killers in history

Strictly speaking, a serial killer is someone who murders at least two people in different events that occur at different times. While "serial murder" is not regulated by any law, serial killer crimes are often seized by the media and public consciousness – especially when there are numerous victims or murders are carried out in horrific ways. The following list explores some of the world's most notorious serial killers.

• Jack the Ripper we call him "Jack the Ripper," but we really don't know who was behind the oldest and most notorious murder. The killer appeared in London's Whitechapel district in 1888 and murdered five women— all prostitutes — and dismembered their bodies. Police speculated that the killer was a surgeon, butcher or someone skilled in using a scalpel. The killer ridiculed the community and the police by writing letters outlining the actions. Although many suspects have been named over the years, the identity of the killer has never been determined.
• Jeffrey Dahmer began killing in 1978 at the age of 18 and was not arrested for murder until 1991, when a potential victim escaped and led police back to Dame's home in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. It was there that some gruesome details of his murderous life could be seen through photographs of mutilated bodies and body parts scattered throughout the apartment. He even had a bucket of acid to deal with the victim. In all, Dahmer killed 17 people, most of them young people of color. He was jailed twice — first for indecency, second for murder — and was killed by a fellow inmate in 1994.
• Harold Shipman Harold Shipman, also known as "Dr. Death," is believed to have killed at least 218 patients, although the total is likely to be close to 250." The doctor, who practised in London and worked in two different offices from 1972 to 1998, had been killing people. It wasn't until a few people raised the red flag that he was caught not at night but in bed during the day. Police mishandled the investigation, and Shipman continued to kill until he became greedy and tried to make up a will for the victim, calling him the beneficiary, which led to suspicion of the victim's daughter. He was eventually convicted in 2000 and committed suicide in prison in 2004.
• John Wayne Gacy was called an extroverted construction worker by his suburban neighbors, and John Wayne Gacy was involved in politics and even played the clown at birthday parties. He's not a clown. In 1978, a 15-year-old boy disappeared during his last meeting, and Gacy was suspected. It wasn't the only time the missing boy's family blamed Gacy, but it was the first time authorities took them seriously. Soon after, the search warrant allowed officers to enter Gacy's home, where nearly 30 bodies were smelled in a four-foot crawling space beneath his home. He was convicted of 33 counts of murder, in addition to rape and torture, and was executed by injection in 1994.
• HH Holmes Chicago also has murderers, but perhaps nothing is more haunting than HH Holmes, a pharmacist who turns a hotel into a torture castle. On the eve of the 1893 World's Fair, Holmes moved to Chicago and began equipping a three-story hotel with a variety of nefarious devices, including gas pipes, secret passages and trapdoors, corridors leading to dead ends, slides leading to basements, sound insulation mats, and torture devices scattered in the labyrinth. The poison gas allowed Holmes to knock down his guests before the worst that happened, usually on his operating table. He then burned corpses in the building's furnace, sold skeletons to medical schools, and conducted life insurance scams. Before he was hanged in 1896, he had handled more than 30 murders in total— only to be discovered after a crook handed him over to him for breach of a financial agreement.
• Pedro Lopez, one of the world's most prolific serial killers, may still be there. Pedro Lopez has been linked to more than 300 murders in his hometown of Colombia, Ecuador and Peru. At least one third of these murders were tribal women. After Lopez's arrest in 1980, police found the graves of more than 50 of his adolescent victims. He was later convicted of murdering 110 girls in Ecuador and confessed to murdering more than 240 in Colombia and Peru. The "Monster of the Andes" didn't even spend 20 years in prison because he was released in 1998 for good performance. For more than 20 years, his whereabouts remain unknown.
• Ted Bondi liked the attention his murder had caused, and many people in the United States were more than happy to give him that attention. The western United States is his hunting ground, and from Washington and Oregon all the way to Utah and Colorado, there have been an unknown number of murders — mostly college-age women. Bundy was arrested and convicted of kidnapping in Colorado, but he escaped supervision and moved to Florida, where he was killed multiple times. Bundy's eventual arrest and its aftermath drew national attention as the alleged killer served as his own lawyer during what is believed to be the first televised murder trial, welcomed the interview, and boasted about the fans he created. He was eventually executed in an electric chair in 1989.