From butchering prostitutes in Victorian London to bludgeoning homeless people in 1980s Calcutta and trying to kill one person for every square on a chessboard in modern Russia, the world is full of serial killers.
Some act out their depraved obsessions strategically, using their evil intellect to carefully pick off victims, as if on a mission – others simply go on a spree, with less thought but just as much bloodshed.
Some are caught quickly while others manage to continue undetected for years – and some are never found at all.
There have been thousands over the years across the continents – here is a list of the countries that have produced the most, according to World Atlas.
The US has had more serial killers than the other nine countries in the top ten put together
10.
was named as tenth on World Atlas’s list, with 83 recorded serial killers.
One infamous case was Ivan Milat. He was known as the ‘Backpacker Murderer’ and was convicted in 1996 for the murders of seven young travellers in New South Wales’ Belanglo State Forest.
Milat was born in New South Wales in 1944 and is reported to have displayed antisocial and psychopathic tendencies from an early age.
His siblings said that when he was young he would attack animals. This led to a stint in a juvenile detention centre when he was 13.
When he was a young adult he was in and out of prison for offences such as theft, breaking and entry and driving stolen cars.
However, none of this compared to the atrocities he would end up committing.
The brutal killings, occurring between 1989 and 1993, horrified the country.
Ivan Milat’s favoured method for killing was stabbing. In fact, he seemed to even have a technique whereby he would stab the victim in the spine to paralyse them
Milat was known to stab his victims in the spine to paralyse them. In fact, he seemed to even have a technique whereby he would stab the victim in the spine to paralyse them.
However one of his victims was also found with ten gun shot wounds to the head and it is believed that he used the woman for target practice.
Milat was sentenced for life in 1994 and made numerous attempts to appeal the decision and even made an attempt at escaping.
He also tried numerous times to force guards to give him items in his cell such as a television, a toaster and a PlayStation.
In order to get his own way he did things such as going on a hunger strike and cutting off his little finger.
He ended up being given a television and a toaster – but never got a PlayStation.
He died of cancer in prison in 2019.
Another equally sadistic killer was John Wayner Glover who was dubbed the Granny Killer for targeting the elderly. He was dubbed the ‘Granny Killer’.
Similarly to Milat, Glover had a tendency to get in trouble with the law when he was young.
He was born in Wolverhampton in the UK in 1932 and moved to when he was in his 20s.
John Wayne Glover bludgeoned a victim with a hammer after following her home – and when he realised she was still breathing he proceeded to smash her head against the pavement until she died
His crimes growing up involved everything from stealing to assaulting women to indecency.
His hatred for older women perhaps came from a difficult relationship with them when he was young, especially with his mother Freda who had several husbands and many boyfriends.
Glover terrorised Sydney’s North Shore in the late 1980s by preying on elderly women, leading to a heightened sense of vulnerability among this demographic.
One of his many victims was Lady Ashton, widow of English-n impressionist artist Sir John William Ashton.
Glover bludgeoned her with a hammer after following her home – and when he realised she was still breathing he proceeded to smash her head against the pavement until she died.
Glover was sentenced to life in prison in 1990 but hanged himself in his cell in 2005 at the age of 72.
9. Germany
Germany has had 88 serial killers according to the World Atlas list.
Over the last 200 years two murderers in particular have terrorised the nation: Fritz Haarmann and Peter Kurten.
Haarmann was known as the ‘Butcher of Hanover’, for very good reason. He is reported to have murdered 27 young men and boys as young as ten, in the 1920s, allegedly selling their remains as meat.
Haarmann was born in Hanover in 1879 and grew up as a very quiet child. The youngest of six, he was said to have been spoiled by his mother.
Fritz Haarmann would kill his victims by luring them into his house, sitting them down – and then biting their throat – often completely ripping out their trachea.
Instead of playing football and doing activities popular with boys, he would play with his sister’s dolls and dress up in their clothes.
The young Haarmann wasn’t the most academic in school and teachers said he was prone to daydreaming.
When he left school, he became a locksmith for a short while before joining the army – but ended up leaving the army due to suffering from periods of lost consciousness.
He got married and had a child and spent a decade as a conman and petty thief.
However throughout all of this he also sexually assaulted young boys and spent periods in mental institutions where doctors declared him ‘incurably deranged’.
Ultimately, he began his murder spree.
His method of killing was unusual, even for a serial killer. His other nickname was the ‘Vampire of Hanover’ because he would kill his victims by luring them into his house, sitting them down – and then biting their throat – often completely ripping out their trachea.
Haarmann was executed in 1925 after being granted his wish to drink a Brazilian coffee and smoke an expensive cigar in his cell.
He said that he ‘repented’ but did ‘not fear death’ and he ‘wanted to die as a man’.
It is reported that he looked notably nervous as he approached the guillotine.
Kurten, dubbed the ‘Monster of Düsseldorf’, couldn’t be described in any other way.
He also walked the streets in the 1920s.
Peter Kurten’s first victim was a nine-year-old girl. He broke into her home, walked into her room, strangled her, slit her throat and then ejaculated to the sound of her blood pouring onto the floor
Kurten was born in Kurten Mulheim in 1883 and unlike Haarmann, his family dynamic was dreadful.
He was the oldest of 13 children to alcoholic parents and they all lived in a one-bedroom apartment.
His father would force his mother to have sex in front of the children and he would also rape one of his daughters.
When Kurten was just five-years-old he tried to drown one of his classmates and when he was nine he began torturing and murdering dogs.
There are claims that this was also the age he committed his first two murders when he drowned two of his classmates by pushing them off a raft and holding their heads under the water.
Kurten, who would ultimately be infamous for the sexual gratification he got from murder, first began to exhibit this when he was 13.
He had a girlfriend and she would refuse to have intercourse with him, so to relieve his urges he would go to the stables and have sex with the sheep.
Afterwards he would stab the sheep to death and he realised that the sexual gratification he got from that was far stronger than the intercourse itself.
His killing spree began a day before his 30th birthday. His first victim was a nine-year-old girl.
Kurten broke into her home, walked into her room, strangled her, slit her throat and then performed a sex act as her blood poured onto the floor.
Kurten was beheaded by guillotine in 1931.
His last meal was veal and a bottle of white wine. He ate the entire meal before requesting a second helping, which was granted.
Shortly before his head was placed on the guillotine, Kürten turned to the prison psychiatrist and asked the question: ‘Tell me, after my head is chopped off, will I still be able to hear, at least for a moment, the sound of my own blood gushing from the stump of my neck? That would be the pleasure to end all pleasures.’
8. Italy
Italy has had the eighth most serial killers at 97, according to the World Atlas list.
One of the most appalling Italian villains was Leonarda Cianciulli, dubbed the ‘Soap-Maker of Correggio’.
Cianciulli had a troubled upbringing and attempted suicide twice in her youth.
She ended up getting married and falling pregnant 17 times. Three were miscarriages and out of the fourteen that were born, ten died young.
She was said to be very protective of her remaining four children.
Throughout her life she visited fortune tellers. One told her: ‘In your right hand I see prison, in your left a criminal asylum.’
When one of her sons said he was planning on joining the army, Cianciulli believed that the way to stop him was to make human sacrifices – and thus her murder spree began.
In the 1930s and 1940s, Cianciulli killed three women in Correggio, Italy.
Her first victim was a spinster who had come to her for help in finding a husband.
Cianciulli told her of a suitable partner in Pola, but asked her to tell no one of the news.
She also persuaded Setti to write letters and postcards to relatives and friends. They were to be mailed when she reached Pola, to tell them that everything was fine.
Leonarda Cianciulli killed her victim with an axe and dragged the body into a closet, where she cut it into nine parts, gathering the blood into a basin
Preparing for her departure, Setti came to visit Cianciulli one last time. Cianciulli killed her with an axe and dragged the body into a closet, where she cut it into nine parts, gathering the blood into a basin.
Cianciulli described herself what she did to her first load of victims in her official statment at the time.
She said: ‘I threw the pieces into a pot, added seven kilos of caustic soda, which I had bought to make soap, and stirred the mixture until the pieces dissolved in a thick, dark mush that I poured into several buckets and emptied in a nearby septic tank.’
The Soap-Maker didn’t just make soap, she made cupcakes as well.
She said: ‘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 and I also ate them.’
Cianciulli was tried for the murders in 1946 and throughout the court case, showed no remorse and did not repent.
Ultimately sentenced to somewhat of a light 30 years in prison and three in an asylum. She died in the asylum of a stroke in 1970.
Another infamous case is that of Donato Bilancia, who terrorised the Italian Riviera in the late 1990s.
Donato Bilancia was convicted of murdering 17 people, including sex workers, businessmen, and a child, driven by a personal vendetta against those he felt had wronged him
Bilancia was convicted of murdering 17 people, including sex workers, businessmen, and a child, driven by a personal vendetta against those he felt had wronged him.
Bilancia had a relatively normal upbringing. He committed minor crimes such as theft in his younger years but did not do anything violent until he was 47-years-old.
He was a gambling addict who lived alone and his first murder was the strangulation of a friend who lured him in to a rigged card game. Then he started on his killing spree.
A number of his murders included following women into toilets at train stations, shooting them in the head and performing a sex act over their corpse – and then stealing their train ticket.
One sex worker who he shot, survived and ultimately testified against the killer, helping to send him down for life imprisonment.
When Bilancia was sentenced to life in prison, he didn’t show remorse because he said it wasn’t him that committed the murders but the disease inside him.
He was said to be a model prisoner and even earned qualifications while inside. He died of Covid in prison in 2020.
7. Canada
Canada has had the seventh most serial killers in the world with 119.
The cases of Robert Pickton and Clifford Olson are among the worst.
Pickton, a pig farmer from British Columbia, was convicted in 2007 for the murders of six women, though he claimed to have killed 49.
His victims, mostly from vulnerable groups such as sex workers and drug addicts, were often overlooked by society.
Robert Pickton was a pig farmer in Canada but ultimately ended up feeding women to the pigs. He had a very close attachment to his mother and was very distant to his abusive father
When Pickton was a young boy, growing up on his parents’ farm, he was very attached to his mother but very distant from his abusive father.
His mother is said to have prioritised the work over her children’s hygiene and would send them to school unwashed and unchanged.
This led to him being teased by the other students who called him ‘stinky piggy’.
He had a pet calf who he was said to have adored. When he came home from school one day to find it had been slaughtered, he was heartbroken.
When he became an adult and began his serial killing spree, he would murder prostitutes and drug addicts, bleed them, gut them, butcher them and then feed them to his pigs.
Meanwhile, Clifford Olson, known as the ‘Beast of British Columbia,’ terrorised the province in the early 1980s.
When Olson was younger he was in prison serving a sentence for crimes he committed as a con artist.
Olson’s method of killing was to strangle his young victims and stab them repeatedly until they died. He was convicted of murdering 11 children and young adults within a single year
His cellmate was Gary Francis Marcoux, who he coaxed into a written confession in order to help himself.
According to Olson, it was discussions that he had with Marcoux in prison that led to him having a sexual interest in children.
Olson’s case was particularly shocking for Canadians due to the age of his victims and his manipulation of the legal system, including a controversial deal with law enforcement that netted his wife and child $100,000 ($10,000 for the location of each victim).
Olson’s method of killing was to strangle his young victims and stab them repeatedly until they died.
He was sentenced in 1982 and given multiple life sentences. The judge said: ‘My considered opinion is that you should never be granted parole for the remainder of your days. It would be foolhardy to let you at large.’
He applied for parole in 1997 but was denied and ended up dying of cancer at the age of 71 in prison.
6. India
Sixth on the list is India with 121 serial killers, home to one killer who some people believe to be the most prolific the world has ever seen.
His name was Thug Behram and he is rumoured to have murdered over 900 people by strangulation. However this was in the late 1700s and early 1900s so accounts of his crimes have varied over the years.
Thug Berham was the leader of India’s Thuggee gang and might have killed over 900 people. What is believed is that, as the leader of the Thuggee cult, he would go around strangling people to death or killing them with a garrote – a strangulation device
What is believed is that, as the leader of the Thuggee cult, he strangled people to death or killed them with a garrote – a strangulation device.
According to the gang, killing was a way to honour the Goddess Kali.
The Thuggee gang is where the English language gets the word ‘thug’ from.
Then there was the ‘Stoneman’ who was never caught. He roamed the streets of Kolkata and Mumbai in the 1980s, bludgeoning his victims to death with a large stone.
He is thought to have been responsible for at least 13 murders.
5. South Africa
Next on the list is South Africa with a reported 123 serial killers.
One infamous case is that of Moses Sithole, known as the ‘ABC Killer’, who committed his crimes in the 1990s.
Sithole lured women with the promise of employment before assaulting and murdering them, ultimately claiming 37 victims.
Moses Sithole was born in 1964 in Voslooros, a township near Boksburg.
His father died when he was five years old and his mother abandoned him and his two siblings, leading them to live in an orphanage.
He ended up going to prison for seven years for an alleged rape and he later said that it was the imprisonment which led to him committing the murders as the women he killed reminded him of the woman he said falsely accused him.
South Africa’s Moses Sithole was known as the ‘ABC Killer’ because of the areas he killed in
Sithole was known as the ‘ABC Killer’ because throughout his sadistic spree he seemed to be working his way up the geographical alphabet – beginning in Atteridgeville, continuing on into Boksburg and finally ending in Cleveland.
Sithole was sentenced in 1997 and was given 50 years for each murder to be served consecutively.
The judge said at the time that if the death penalty was still around he would have received it. He is currently 27 years into a 2,410-year sentence.
Stewart Wilken was also active that decade.
Wilken didn’t seem to have any pattern to his murders, preying on anyone and everyone from prostitutes to young boys and even his own adolescent daughter.
When he spoke about killing his daughter, who had been abused by her father, he said that he wanted to ‘send her soul to God’.
Stewart Wilken killed his own daughter in order to ‘send her soul to God’. There wasn’t much pattern to this serial killer’s murders
4. Japan
Fourth is Japan with 137 serial killers and home to two of the most depraved individuals.
One of them is Tsutomu Miyazaki. He horrified the country between 1988 and 1989, targeting young girls.
Before all this, however, he had a relatively normal upbringing.
He was born in 1962 in Tokyo to a well-off family who ran a local newspaper.
He was born with a disability that prevented him from being able to bend his wrists into an upward position – leading him to being bullied at school.
He was depressed and had no intention of taking over the family business. He even attempted several times to commit suicide.
When his grandfather died it led him even deeper into this depression and in an effort to cope, he ate some of his grandfather’s ashes.
Tsutomu Miyazaki would murder young girls, molest their body afterwards and then keep their body parts as ‘trophies’
Several weeks after this, he was caught watching one of his sisters in the shower and when she confronted him, he attacked her.
Miyazaki’s spree saw him murder young girls, molest their bodies afterwards and then keep their body parts as ‘trophies’.
When Miyazaki’s trial began in 1990, he was said to be talking nonsensically, blaming his actions on an alter ego called ‘Rat Man’ who he says forced him to kill.
He even drew ‘Rat Man’ for the court room.
Despite Japan having a policy of not punishing those not in sound mind, he was ultimately sentenced to death and hanged in 2008.
Then there is Futoshi Matsunaga, alongside his accomplice Junko Ogata who perpetrated a series of heinous acts from 1996 to 1998 involving confinement, torture, and murder.
Matsunaga didn’t seem to have murderous tendencies growing up. He was charming and his only run-ins came from him being undisciplined.
He got married when he was 19-years-old and had a son – and then had ten affairs.
One of his affairs was his future accomplice, Ogata. Some of their victims even included Ogata’s family members.
With a low kill count compared to others on this list, the pair more than made up for it with their barbarity.
Futoshi Matsunaga made other people torture and murder his victims while he watched
One of their most deranged murders was that of a man named Kumio Toraya. They locked him up with his daughter and instead of killing him themselves, they forced his own daughter to torture him until he died.
They also made him eat his own feces, electrocuted him and made the daughter bite him.
After he died they tried to brainwash the daughter that it was her fault and that she chose to murder her own father.
Matsunaga was sentenced to death as was Ogata.
Ogata managed to get her sentence changed to life imprisonment, but Matsanaga did not.
3. UK
At number 3 is the UK with 190 serial killers.
The UK holds the unofficial and unfortunate title as the home of serial killers with the notion of real-life monsters roaming the nighttime streets searching for a victim entering pop culture in Victorian London.
Despite his identity having never been discovered, Jack the Ripper was held responsible for the murder of at least five prostitutes in London in the late 1800s.
It is believed that he derived some sort of sexual pleasure from not only sexually assaulting them, but cutting out their organs.
It is believed that Jack the Ripper derived some sort of sexual pleasure from sexually assaulting his victims, murdering them – and then cutting out their organs.
2. Russia
Second is Russia with 196 serial killers.
Among the most infamous is Andrei Chikatilo, known as the ‘Butcher of Rostov,’ who brutally murdered at least 50 women and children between 1978 and 1990.
Chikatilo was born in 1936 into a poor family in the village of Yabluchne, then in Ukraine.
He was shy and weak and socially awkward. He was also repeatedly told by his mother that he had an older brother that died before he was born because he was taken by their starving neighbours, murdered and eaten.
Chikatilo was a devout communist and wrote for a communist newspaper in school.
He had a girlfriend when he was 17 but was unable to have sex with her because he suffered from impotence. In the end, she broke up with him.
That same year, he attacked an 11-year-old girl who was friends with his younger sister, performing a sex act on her as she tried to escape.
He didn’t get caught for this and went on to become a teacher, often spying on the girls in the changing rooms.
When he found out that some of the youngsters in the school, were involved sexually with each other, it hurt him because he felt ashamed that he was 30 years old and still hadn’t managed to have sex.
Several of Andrei Chikatilo’s murders involved him attempting to rape a woman but being unable to due to impotence – and then killing them because of it
Several of Chikatilo’s murders involved him attempting to rape a woman but being unable to due to impotence – and then killing them because of it.
His ability to evade capture for years highlighted issues with Soviet police methods and societal denial about the existence of such criminals in their midst.
Chikatilo was caught and sentenced to death in 1992.
He was executed by a gunshot to the back of the head in 1994, despite his attempts to mitigate his sentence.
Another infamous case is that of Alexander Pichushkin, dubbed the ‘Chessboard Killer’, who aimed to fill the 64 squares of a chessboard with that number of murders.
Pichushkin was born in 1974 and grew up in Moscow. He was a very normal and sociable child until he had an accident where he fell off a swing and the swing came back and hit him in the forehead.
Doctors believe this could have started his downward mental health spiral.
He grew up top be volatile, unstable and obsessive and went to a school for children with learning disabilities.
However, he was in fact said to be highly intelligence and his grandfather saw this and took him in.
Alexander Pichushkin, dubbed the ‘Chessboard Killer’, aimed to fill the 64 squares of a chessboard with that amount of murders
There, he learned to play chess and became extremely passionate about the game.
When his grandfather died it greatly effected Pichushkin and he began to drink a lot of vodka.
His killings were comparably more traditional than others on this list – he would simply bludgeon them with a bottle.
He only managed 48 before being caught.
Pichushkin was sentenced in 2007 for life imprisonment with the first 15 years to be spent in solitary confinement. He is still in prison to this day.
1. US
And finally, at number 1 with an incomparable 3,615 serial killers, it is the US.
Ted Bundy is one of the most infamous American serial killers of all time.
He was born in 1946 to a highly dysfunctional family in Vermont. There were accusations that his father was also his grandfather and he was the product of incest however this was later disproven with a DNA test.
Nonetheless, his grandparents did bring him up and pretended to everybody that he was actually their son, apparently to avoid being shamed a child being born out of wedlock.
Bundy occasionally exhibited disturbing behavior at an early age. His aunt recalled awakening from a nap to find herself surrounded by knives from the kitchen, and her 3-year-old nephew standing by the bed, smiling.
These unusual behaviours continued into his adolescence. He would set traps for people that would severely injure them, one girl having her leg slit completely open.
Bundy was a loner, but not a social outcast and he once told journalists that he ‘chose to be alone’ because he doesn’t understand why people would want to have friends.
‘Some people perceived me as being shy and introverted,’ he said.
‘I didn’t go to dances. I didn’t go on the beer drinking outings.’
During his murderous years, he kidnapped, raped and killed dozens of young girls in the 1970s and was said to use his ‘charm’ and his false innocence to trick people into thinking he wasn’t the culprit.
Ted Bundy kidnapped, raped and murdered dozens of young girls in the 1970s and was said to use his ‘charm’ and his false innocence to trick people into thinking he wasn’t the culprit
Bundy was first arrested in 1975 but after being sentenced, spent the next decade repeatedly breaking out of prison and then being caught again.
He even got married while in prison to a woman who he used as a character witness and who had moved near to the jail to be close to him.
He was executed by electric chair in 1989.
Another notorious figure is Jeffrey Dahmer, known for his gruesome acts involving 17 young men between 1978 and 1991, including cannibalism and preservation of body parts.
Dahmer grew up relatively normal and was said to be an ‘energetic and happy child’ but after having a hernia operation shortly before his fourth birthday he became quiet and isolated.
He did have a few friends at school but was widely regarded as timid.
From an early age, Dahmer manifested an interest in dead animals. At the age of four, he saw his father removing animal bones from beneath the family home.
He occasionally searched beneath and around the family home for additional bones, and explored the bodies of live animals to discover where their bones were located.
He called the bones ‘fiddlesticks’.
When Dahmer reached puberty he realised he was gay and despite being in a relationship with a boy in his school, he did not tell his parents.
He began to be obsessed with the human anatomy and what started out as a sexual interest in various body parts such as the chest and torso gradually became more of an interest in dissection.
Dahmer, who was gay but struggled to accept it, would kill the men, sexually assaults their bodies, cut them up, eat their hearts and keep their skulls as souvenirs
Dahmer, when it came to the murders, would kill the men, sexually assault their bodies, cut them up, eat their hearts and keep their skulls as souvenirs.
He was sentenced in 1992.
He tried to use the cannibalism aspect of his crimes as a mental illness defence but it didn’t wash with the courts and he was sentence to 15 life sentences.
He was kept in solitary confinement for the first year and in May 1994 he was baptised.
Two years in to his 957-year stretch, he was beaten to death by a fellow inmate.