10 Serial Killers Connected to Other Serial Killers

10 Serial Killers Linked to Other Serial Killers

Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we’re looking at serial killers who share some sort of surprising connection. Whether they’ve associated with, copied or even targeted each other, there are eerie links to investigate.

Dennis Rader

Dana Sue Gray (Communicated)
The BTK Killer was an urban legend for evading authorities during his activities in Kansas between the 1970s and ‘90s. Finally, in 2005, Dennis Rader was sentenced to life imprisonment for 10 murders. Among the many who wrote to him afterwards was a writer for Psychology Today, who received a forwarded prison postcard from Dana Sue Gray. The former nurse killed and robbed three elderly women before a failed homicide attempt led to her arrest in 1994. Though Gray claimed to only have financial motivations for killing, her correspondence with BTK revealed a genuine admiration for a fellow murderer. She’s reportedly reached out to other criminals. Disturbingly, Rader just boasted about having a higher body count than Gray.

Edmund Kemper

Herbert Mullin (Investigation/Interacted)
Since 1973, Edmund Kemper has been one of the most infamous inmates at the California Medical Facility in Vacaville. Many other serial killers have resided there with him, but Kemper has a unique history with Herbert Mullin. Each man’s police investigation was compromised by their being active around the same area and time. They were finally captured two months apart, then became neighbors again at CMF. Kemper has claimed that he was previously aware of and had encounters with Mullin for years. They reportedly interacted more in prison, but mostly with hostility. Kemper nevertheless acknowledged finding a kindred spirit in his competitor. Mullin ultimately died at the California Health Care Facility in Stockton, in 2022.

Pedro Rodrigues Filho

Francisco de Assis Pereira (Targeted)
One of Brazil’s most notorious murderers is best-known for his connection to a fictional serial killer. Pedro Rodrigues Filho’s primarily targeting suspected criminals inspired Jeff Lindsay to create the vigilante Dexter Morgan. After leaving prison in 2007, “Pedrinho Matador” publicly expressed remorse for the many lives he took or planned to take. Among his targets, he claimed in an interview, was Francisco de Assis Pereira. “O Maníaco do Parque” shocked Brazil when he confessed to eleven sexual assaults and murders in 1998. He epitomized what Filho stood against, and even survived a prison riot in 2000. While it’s uncertain if Filho had a shot at Pereira, he maintained that meeting such violence with violence is senseless. In 2023, Filho was murdered by multiple unidentified assailants.

Rodney Alcala

Richard Cottingham (Co-Workers)
Rodney Alcala and Richard Cottingham were two of New York’s biggest serial killers in the 1970s. While it’s not too surprising that they crossed paths, they did so daily. In ‘71, Alcala found work at an office of the health insurance company Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, where Cottingham worked as a computer operator. He was still working there when he was apprehended in 1980. Alcala, however, hopped jobs throughout the East and West coasts, earning the nickname “The Dating Game Killer” for his appearance on the eponymous California-based game show. He and the Torso Killer later claimed they never interacted while working for BCBS. The coincidence nonetheless reflects the scale of New York’s serial killing crisis at the time.

Jack the Ripper

Peter Sutcliffe (Possible Copycat)
In the more than 130 years since Jack the Ripper terrorize London, he has never been officially identified. But in the 1970s, he seemed to be active again in West Yorkshire. Peter Sutcliffe was ultimately convicted of killing 13 women, many of them sex workers. This profession was targeted by the Ripper and still attracts many serial killers. Though Sutcliffe didn’t claim to be a copycat, his MO earned him the nickname the Yorkshire Ripper. Moreover, John Humble of Wearside infamously disrupted the police investigation by submitting a false confession signed “Jack the Ripper”. Whatever was Sutcliffe’s objective, his legacy is entangled with one of England’s most fabled criminals. The Yorkshire Ripper in fact claimed more lives than his namesake.

Kenneth Bianchi

Richard Ramirez (Jail Cell)
The Hillside Strangler shook Los Angeles well before the killer was revealed to actually be two people. It’s believed that cousins Kenneth Bianchi and Angelo Buono Jr. partly inspired Richard Ramirez’s killing spree. In any case, the Night Stalker found an unsettling upside to his arrest in 1985. According to the 2021 docuseries “Night Stalker: The Hunt For a Serial Killer”, Ramirez was elated to be placed in the same jail cell that held Bianchi after his own arrest. With LA’s long history of serial killers, two were likely to occupy the same space at a police station. But Ramirez’s enthusiasm for his fellow killers and this coincidence distinguishes it as another indictment of his warped psyche.

John Wayne Gacy

Robin Gecht (Employee)
Besides his enterprises of Pogo the Clown and sadistic homicide, John Wayne Gacy ran the Chicagoland construction business PDM Contractors. Some of his victims worked for him. Years into his prison sentence, Gacy began insisting that most of the 33 murders behind his death penalty were committed by employees. The only real substance to this far-fetched claim was Robin Gecht. The handyman led his own group, the Ripper Crew, who murdered 18 women in occult rituals during the early 1980s. Investigation Discovery found evidence that Gecht did work for Gacy, but none that they collaborated on anything other than contract work. Whatever influence both men might have had on each other, their unspeakable crimes were made worse by their organizational skills.

Zodiac Killer

Eddie Seda (Copycat)
The serial killer known only as Zodiac has been mythologized due to his never being captured. Thankfully, Heriberto “Eddie” Seda was. He targeted people based on their zodiac signs and sent coded letters to police and media. Seda had attacked nine people, killing three, by the time he was apprehended in 1996. His age alone ruled out the theory that the so-called “New York Zodiac Killer” was the same person who murdered five in the San Francisco Bay Area in the late ‘60s. Seda was just an admirer, that rare example of a copycat who attained his own status as a serial killer. He is now serving 232 years in prison, while the original Zodiac Killer remains officially unidentified.

Ottis Toole

Jeffrey Dahmer (Investigation)
Otis Toole claimed to commit hundreds more murders than the six he was convicted on. He most notably confessed to, but was not formally charged with, killing the six-year-old son of “America’s Most Wanted” host John Walsh. In 2007, it was publicly revealed that police also looked into another Florida-based suspected serial killer. Jeffrey Dahmer was in the same mall on the same day Adam Walsh was abducted from a Sears department store. Some even theorize that he and Toole collaborated on the crime. The official record is that Henry Lee Lucas was Toole’s only partner. Still, with so much overlap between his and Dahmer’s profile and methods, their paths crossing is its own loaded true crime subject.

Ted Bundy

Gary Ridgway (Profiled)
In the years leading up to his execution, Ted Bundy became an asset in understanding the nature of serial killers. He especially helped in understanding the nature of one in particular. In 1984, Bundy offered to assist a task force pursuing Washington State’s Green River Killer. His prison interviews provided insight into the mindset and behavioral patterns unique to his psychopathology. But Gary Ridgway would not be apprehended until 2001, 12 years after Bundy’s execution. DNA profiling ultimately brought him down, but many of Bundy’s predictions of his character were uncanny. His own psychological profiling is a notable example of how terrible minds think alike. According to interviewer Dave Reichert, however, Bundy was likely just jealous of Ridgway’s twisted fame.

What are some other remarkable connections between notorious criminals? Provide a tip in the comments.