10 Most Infamous Copycat Killers

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Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we’re examining ten of the most famous copycats who modeled their crimes after other killers.

Peter Sutcliffe

Inspired by Jack the Ripper
Almost one hundred years after Jack the Ripper terrorized London in 1888, another Ripper took to the seedy streets of England. Unlike his model, this one was eventually caught. He was Peter Sutcliffe, a truck driver who murdered at least thirteen women between 1975 and 1980. Like Jack the Ripper, he primarily targeted sex workers, mostly in the red light district of West Yorkshire. Due to the similarities of the cases, the press soon dubbed him the Yorkshire Ripper, and one famous hoaxer even sent a letter to the Daily Mail pretending to be Sutcliffe, signing it “Jack the Ripper.” Sutcliffe was finally caught in 1981 after a bungled investigation and was sentenced to life in prison, where he died in 2020.

Hoshang Amini

Inspired by Asghar the Murderer
This Iranian serial killer is the most prolific in the country’s history with 67 known victims, having surpassed Asghar the Murderer. It’s no surprise that he was influenced by the latter. Asghar murdered 33 people in the early 20th century before he was finally apprehended in 1934. When asked to give a reason for his crimes, he claimed, “These are the enemies of society. Because of that, I have killed them.” His crime spree influenced Hoshang Amini, who later cited Asghar as an inspiration and claimed a similar motive of wanting to rid society of whom he deemed corrupt and evil. He was caught in 1962 and publicly executed the following year.

Yevhenii Balan

Inspired by Anatoly Onoprienko
One-upmanship is present in most industries, including, evidently, serial killing. In 1996, The Beast of Ukraine Anatoly Onoprienko was apprehended and confessed to murdering 52 people. His infamous crime spree supposedly inspired a man named Yevhenii Balan, who desired to claim a higher body count. He didn’t even come close, as he took the lives of nine people before he was caught in September 2011. One of his victims was Svitlana Strizh, Balan’s own step daughter whom he stalked, assaulted, and strangled. He was finally caught when a boxer stumbled across a crime in progress, punched Balan, and held him down until police arrived. He was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison.

The Academy Maniacs

Inspired by The Dnepropetrovsk Maniacs
Some of the more…adventurous among you may have seen the famous “3 Guys 1 Hammer” video taken by the Dnepropetrovsk maniacs, which depicts the pair killing Sergei Yatzenko. It was almost certainly seen by Russian teenagers Artyom Anoufriev and Nikita Lytkin. According to the press, their crimes were heavily influenced by the Dnepropetrovsk Maniacs, and they in turn were given a similar moniker - the Academy Maniacs. The pair murdered six and injured nine throughout their crime spree, which came to an end when Lytkin’s uncle found video evidence of a murder on Lytkin’s camera. They had filmed themselves just as the Dnepropetrovsk maniacs had done before them. Both were sentenced to prison, and Lytkin took his own life in November 2021.

Matthew Milat

Inspired by Ivan Milat
Sometimes killing seems to run in the family. Ivan Milat is one of the most notorious killers in Australian history, having murdered seven tourists in and around Belanglo State Forest. The case was heavily covered by the media, and a movie called “Wolf Creek” was modeled after the so-called “backpacker murders.” Years later, Ivan’s great nephew Matthew Milat murdered his friend David Auchterlonie, also inside Belanglo State Forest. After killing Auchterlonie, he reportedly told another friend, “You know the last name Milat, I did what they do.” Unsurprisingly, the court later argued that he was “strongly influenced by [his great uncle]”, and he was given a prison sentence of 43 years.

Anushervon Rakhmanov

Inspired by Vladimir Ionesyan
We return to Russia for the story of Anushervon Rakhmanov, a man suspected of killing seven people in the mid 2010s. Decades prior, Vladimir Ionesyan killed a number of people by posing as a gas inspector. He pretended to be an employee of the Russian gas company Mosgaz, and with this guise, would enter apartments and kill the inhabitants. Ionesyan was executed in 1964. Exactly fifty years later, Rakhmanov began his killing spree, also posing as a Mosgaz employee and breaking into apartments to terrorize the occupants. The press even named him Mosgaz-2, acknowledging the obvious influence of Ionesyan. Rakhmanov was eventually caught and confessed to his crimes, but he took his own life before he could be tried in court.

Luo Shubiao

Inspired by Lam Kor-wan
Luo Shubiao had kleptomania, meaning he couldn’t resist stealing items and was in and out of Chinese labor camps for theft. In the late 1980s, he began watching videos of graphic violence and developed a fascination with Lam Kor-wan, a serial killer from Hong Kong who murdered four people in 1982. According to a confession later made by Luo, he became deeply interested in Lam’s grotesque MO and developed a deep desire to emulate it. So he did exactly that. Luo murdered eighteen people throughout the early ‘90s, often mutilating their bodies just as Lam had done before him. And with one prior murder in 1977, this brought his total body count to nineteen. He was convicted of his crimes and executed in 1995.

The Tylenol Killer Copycats

Inspired by the Chicago Tylenol Murders
The greater Chicago area was struck by a horrifically random crime in the fall of 1982. Someone had intentionally laced bottles of Tylenol with potassium cyanide, leading to the deaths of seven people. The perpetrator was never caught, and the killings both impacted sales of Halloween candy and led to the widespread adoption of tamper-resistant packaging. Unfortunately, it also led to a high number of copycat crimes. In the years following the initial incident, there were many reports of people being killed and grievously injured by tampered capsules, most of which had been laced with cyanide. This in turn led the pharmaceutical industry to abandon traditional gelatin capsules in favor of more modern tablets.

Derek Brown

Inspired by Jack the Ripper
Peter Sutcliffe wasn’t the only killer who modeled himself after Jack the Ripper. There was also Derek Brown, a newspaper delivery driver who, according to the courts, sought notoriety through killing. He murdered two women and would have likely killed many more had he not been caught. Brown was greatly influenced by Jack the Ripper and copied many aspects of his MO - one of his victims was a sex worker, he butchered both of their bodies, and most telling of all, he killed them both in Whitechapel, the same area of east London in which Jack operated. Unlike Jack, Brown was eventually caught following a thorough police investigation and was sentenced to life in prison.

Heriberto Seda

Inspired by The Zodiac Killer
Heriberto Seda was active in New York throughout the early ‘90s, killing three people and injuring a further six. After each crime, he would send a taunting letter to the police and media and would even include his own personal cryptograms. Sound familiar? Yep, it’s the Zodiac all over again. In fact, the correlations were so obvious that New York police even floated the possibility that it was the Zodiac! Funnily enough, it wasn’t an investigation that brought down Seda, but a domestic dispute. Seda’s half-sister called the police after he shot her in the buttocks, and Seda closed his handwritten statement with the same symbol he used in the taunting letters. Police made the connection and Seda was thrown in prison for 230 years.

Can you think of any more examples? Let us know in the comments below!