25 Notorious Serial Killers of Each Year (2000 - 2024)
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VOICE OVER: Peter DeGiglio
WRITTEN BY: Jordy McKen
Dive into the dark world of serial killers as we explore the most notorious criminals who terrorized society from 2000 to 2024. This chilling countdown reveals the most infamous murderers of each year, their horrifying crimes, and the justice that ultimately caught up with them. From the Grim Sleeper to the Golden State Killer, and from the BTK Killer to Samuel Little, we'll uncover the shocking stories of these dangerous individuals who brought terror to communities across the globe. Which serial killer do you think is the most notorious? Share in the comments.
Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we’re exploring the most infamous serial killers of every year of the 21st century so far. We’ll be examining the year when justice came calling as the criminal was arrested or sentenced for their deeds.
In 1999, a newspaper editor and the police station in Lahore, Pakistan, received disturbing letters. The writer claimed he had abused and taken the lives of 100 underage young men. They finished with their intention to end their own life in a river. However, the water was searched, and nothing was found. A month later, fearing police brutality after claims of being attacked by them previously, Iqbal turned up at a newspaper office and confessed. In 2000, he was sentenced to a brutal execution, akin to how Iqbal had treated his victims. However, government officials stated it wouldn’t be as bad as the judge had deemed. Before it could be enacted, in 2001, Iqbal took his own life.
Sometimes, killers go that extra, terrifying mile with their modus operandi. David Parker Ray modified a trailer that would be labeled his “toy box.” The trailer was soundproofed and filled with instruments for his violence. He would abduct women, abuse them for months in the trailer, and presumably, eventually end their lives, sometimes with accomplices, one of them being his girlfriend, Cynthia Hendy. In 1999, a woman managed to escape the “toy box” after three days and get help from a neighbor. The police immediately arrested Ray and Hendy. On a plea deal, Ray was sentenced to 224 years in jail, while Hendy, who testified against her former partner, got thirty-six years. It’s unknown how many women Ray killed, but some estimates are upwards of sixty.
Terry Rasmussen earned the moniker Chameleon Killer not because he blended in, but because he went by a number of different aliases. While Rasmussen has only been convicted of one murder, experts believe that he committed at least five. Many peg him as the man behind New Hampshire’s Bear Brook murders of the late 1970s, which encompassed the deaths of four girls, including Rasmussen’s daughter. He died before he could be tried for their deaths. He is also thought to have slain his girlfriend Denise Beaudin in 1981. Finally, he did away with his wife Eunsoon Jun in 2002, and it was for this crime that he was finally arrested and imprisoned. He died in High Desert State Prison in 2010.
For someone whose IQ apparently tested in the low eighties, Gary Ridgway was amazingly clever. He murdered forty-eight women in Washington state, yet evaded capture for almost twenty years. He hid his victims deep in the woods or the river; he even left other people’s trash near the bodies to confuse investigators. Ridgway was actually a suspect in 1982, soon after the murders began, but there wasn’t enough evidence to charge him until 2001. Ridgway was something of an enigma. He claimed to hate sex workers, but frequently hired them, even while married; he was devoutly religious one moment, murderous the next. Perhaps he’s best summed up in his own words: “Choking is what I did, and I was pretty good at it.”
In the wake of September 11, 2001, Price’s paranoia spiraled out of control. With a long criminal history and mental health issues, he believed he was being followed and had a tracking device in his hand. In 2003, Price began his spree. Altogether, he took the lives of four people as revenge against those who enacted the 2001 attack. However, only one of his victims was of Middle Eastern descent. Price walked into a police station and told them a person called “Dog” had been responsible. The officers, heavily suspecting Price, met with him the next day, and he confessed to his crimes. In 2004, he was sentenced to 150 years in jail without parole.
Having named himself BTK after his modus operandi, for twenty years Rader was a massive thorn in the side of the police in Kansas. Like the infamous Jack the Ripper, he sent mocking letters to the cops and media. But in person, Rader seemed nice. He had a loving family and was president of his local church congregation. His first victim was the Otero family in 1974, and his tenth and last victim was Dolores Davis in 1991. Then he dropped off the map. But in 2004, he began taunting them once again. However, he got sloppy with a floppy disk, and it was traced to his church. In 2005, Rader pleaded guilty and got ten consecutive life sentences.
This is a frightening serial killer and one of the most prolific in American history. Charles Cullen worked as a nurse in various New Jersey hospitals throughout the ‘80s, ‘90s, and early 2000s. And in that time, he killed multiple patients by overdosing them on drugs. His true number of victims is unknown. 29 have been confirmed, but he has personally confessed to killing 40. But even that number may be low; investigators believe that Cullen was responsible for hundreds of deaths. It was noticed that many patients were dying under Cullen’s care, but a national shortage of nurses ensured that he kept finding work. He was finally arrested in December of 2003 and has since been given eighteen life sentences.
In 2006, Pat McLaughlin was a maintenance worker at a church in Glasgow, Scotland. However, that wasn’t his real name. Tobin had used the alias to hide his criminal history of assaulting two teenagers and spending 10 years in jail. After Angelika Kluk’s body was found at the church, Tobin’s identity was discovered, and he was arrested for her murder. In 2007, he was found guilty and sentenced to life with a minimum of 21 years. In 2007 and 2008, the remains of 2 teenagers, Vicky Hamilton and Dinah McNicol, respectively, were found at former homes Tobin lived at. Both had been missing since 1991. Tobin was found guilty of both murders, having his life minimum sentence increased to a whole life order in 2009.
From the late ‘90s into the 2000s, Louisiana had been experiencing a spike in murders and assaults of men and boys, often Black and sometimes gay, each showing a similar cause of death. This led to the killer being named “The Bayou Strangler.” In 2006, the police arrested Dominique after one man told them he'd escaped a dangerous situation from him. While he denied the allegations, Dominique gave them a blood sample. On the surface, he didn’t look like a killer, as he was short and had heart issues. Yet the DNA sample came back positive for several cases, causing Dominique to confess to 23 murders. In 2008, due to a plea bargain, Dominique was sentenced to eight life imprisonment terms without parole.
From 2006 to 2008, women living in Seoul, South Korea, had to live in fear. An unknown man was picking them up from various places, assaulting them, and then taking their lives. The investigation into it led the police to Kang in 2009. During the interrogation, he confessed to killing 8 women. However, in 2005, Kang had escaped a house fire that had taken the lives of his wife and his mother-in-law. While he denied causing the fatal arson, he was found guilty of the crime, totaling his victim number to 10 women. In 2009, Kang was sentenced to execution. However, an informal moratorium in South Korea has halted capital punishment since 1997.
Active initially in the 1980s, the Grim Sleeper earned his moniker from the extended break that he took between 1988 and the early 2000s. Real name Lonnie Franklin Jr., the Sleeper took his first confirmed victim in 1984. He then claimed a further nine lives, with his final murder occurring on September 11, 1988. He did attack a 30-year-old woman the following November, but she survived. Perhaps fearing the repercussions of her survival, the Sleeper lay dormant for over a decade, his next victim likely being 43-year-old Georgia Mae Thomas on December 28, 2000. It wasn’t until the advent of DNA testing that Franklin was considered a suspect, and he was finally arrested in 2010 - 26 years after taking his first victim.
In 1990, shortly after being discharged from the US Army, Sowell was sentenced for assaulting a woman. He was released in 2005 and years later began the killing spree that would get him the moniker of “The Cleveland Strangler.” In 2009, after one victim survived and informed the police of her assault, the cops arrived at his Cleveland, Ohio, home. There, they found the remains of 11 women and arrested Sowell. After several delays, the trial got underway in 2011. Sowell was found guilty of the 11 murders, as well as a litany of other crimes. The judge agreed with the jury’s recommendation and sentenced Sowell to capital punishment. However, he passed away naturally in 2021.
What’s most terrifying for the police and the public is a killer with no M.O. But to make things worse, how about one who was also trained by the U.S Army? This was the case with Israel Keyes. Across the country, Keyes had set up “kill kits,” which gave him access to equipment wherever he decided to attack someone. After he killed eighteen-year-old Samantha Koenig, the FBI was able to track his bank account use and make an arrest following the demand for a ransom. Once he was in custody, however, it was discovered that Keyes was responsible for the murder of multiple victims. Before he faced trial in 2012, Keyes took his own life, and took with him information that might have been used to solve other cases.
During his time in the US Army, Gibson developed substance use issues, leading to being dishonorably discharged. From there, he had stints in jail for several crimes, including theft and assault. This led to many accusations of mental illness, but nothing that was officially confirmed by professionals. In 2012, after Gibson’s mother died, he snapped. Within a few weeks, he had assaulted and murdered 2 women. One of his victims was his mom’s friend, whose body was discovered in Gibson’s home. He confessed to both murders to the cops, plus another he’d done in 2002. In 2013, the jury took less than 20 minutes to find Gibson guilty of one murder. Altogether, he received 2 death sentences and 65 years in jail.
In 2019, the FBI confirmed that they’d identified Samuel Little as the most prolific serial killer in US history. After being convicted for slaying three people in 2014, the unsettling extent of his crimes began to leak out over the next few years. By 2018, Little had confessed to killing ninety-three women across the country. Little provided the FBI with details on many of the cases from 1970 to 2005 and even drew the victims from memory to prove he was telling the truth. Before he passed away in 2020, more than sixty of Little’s confessions across at least fourteen states had been confirmed by the authorities.
Starting in 1992 and lasting nearly 2 decades, the Russian city of Angarsk and the surrounding area was plagued by a killer known as “The Werewolf” or “The Angarsk Maniac.” Mainly targeting women, the criminal had taken many lives, including a police officer. During an investigation at one of the crime scenes, there were tracks from a vehicle typically used by cops. In 2012, when current and former officers were DNA tested, Popkov’s matched, who was now working as a security guard after leaving the force. In 2015, he was sentenced to life for 22 murders. Over the years since, Popkov has confessed to taking the lives of as many as 86 people, earning him further life sentences and years to his punishment.
Between 1996 and 1997, three women went missing from Claremont, a suburb in Western Australia; two were later found dead. These circumstances made police suspect a serial killer was responsible–but finding that killer would require one of the longest, most expensive investigations in Australian history. Over the following years, numerous suspects were interrogated, watched, and eventually ruled out. Then, a study of fibers from the crime scenes revealed two important facts: what the murderer had been wearing, and what kind of car he drove. Both implicated Bradley Robert Edwards. His DNA also turned out to match samples found under one victim’s fingernails. Edwards was arrested and charged with murder in 2016, and is currently serving a life sentence in prison.
In 1987, as a teenager, Kohlhepp was sentenced to jail for kidnap and assault. Released in 2001, he later became a realtor. In 2016, Kala Brown and Charles David Carver vanished from one of Kohlhepp’s properties. A couple of months later, she was found chained up in a storage container based at the location. Brown told police that Kohlhepp had murdered Carver, assaulted her, and shown her the graves of other victims. The police soon found 2 bodies of a married couple who’d gone missing in 2015. When Kohlhepp was arrested, he confessed to the 3 murders, plus the 2003 killing of 4 people in a motorbike shop. In 2017, a plea bargain got him 7 consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole.
In 2013, former US Marine Vann was released from jail after serving 4 years for assault. The next year, the body of Afrikka Hardy was discovered in Hammond, Indiana. The investigation led officials to Vann. During the interrogation, he confessed to Hardy’s murder but also to many others. For several years, a reporter and later a coroner had warned police about a possible serial killer in Gary, Indiana, with up to 18 victims, but their concerns were dismissed. Vann led the police to abandoned houses where he stashed 7 of his victims, mostly in the city of Gary. In 2018, as part of a plea deal, Vann was sentenced to 7 concurrent life sentences without parole.
Nicknamed “Squeaky” and with a friendly reputation, Hayes seemed like a good person. However, behind the scenes, he was anything but. From late 2005 to 2006, the bodies of 3 sex workers were found in Daytona Beach, Florida. Hayes was investigated for being “The Daytona Beach Killer.” However, he was dismissed as the criminal profile called for a white man. In 2007, a similar murder happened, then another in 2016, which matched DNA evidence from the Daytona Beach slayings. The DNA was run through an ancestry genetic database, leading to a match for Hayes. In 2019, he was arrested. In 2022, Hayes was sentenced for the Daytona murders to 3 consecutive life sentences without parole. He’s currently awaiting trial for the 2016 murder.
Police officers are meant to be honorable and find justice for victims, not cause a wake of destruction like Joseph James DeAngelo. In 1976, he began his spree of assaults and burglaries in Sacramento, California. In the space of three years, he had committed fifty attacks. By 1978, DeAngelo progressed by slaying Brian and Katie Maggiore. He morphed into the “Original Night Stalker” and later the “Golden State Killer” before the crimes stopped in 1986. Then, in 2018, the police used genetic genealogy from the DNA found at DeAngelo’s crimes to trace it back to him. In 2020, amongst several charges, he pled guilty to thirteen murders as part of a deal to avoid capital punishment and got a life sentence.
From 1986 to 1994, at least 3 females were assaulted and murdered in Paris, France, by the same assailant. Nicknamed the “Pockmarked Man” due to acne scars, the police were stumped for decades. However, during the investigation and witness statements, they realized the killer was an officer. Armed with DNA from the 1987 murder and modern technology, the cops summoned current and former officers to a test in 2021. Shortly after getting the request, Vérove vanished. He’d worked as an officer in Paris for years before retiring in 2019, even appearing on a national game show. Vérove took his own life. As well as his DNA matching, he left a letter to his wife that confessed to committing crimes before stopping in 1997.
For 10 years, US Navy veteran Ortiz had an impeccable record as a member of the United States Border Patrol in Texas. In 2018, Erika Peña ran to a state trooper and told them she’d escaped from Ortiz’s vehicle. He was soon connected to the murder of 4 women within 2 weeks, all of whom were sex workers. Ortiz ran from the police after he was approached. However, he was soon found hiding in a parking lot and was arrested. The police believe Ortiz attempted to not be taken alive. The border agent confessed to the 4 murders during the interrogation. However, Ortiz still pleaded not guilty. In 2022, he was found guilty and sentenced to life in jail without parole.
One of the most infamous cold cases of our time was the Gilgo Beach killings. Dating back to 1996, a man did away with at least ten people and dumped their remains in the Gilgo Beach area of Long Island. In December 2010, the remains of four women were found, and they were dubbed The Gilgo Four. Just a few months later, investigators found six more sets of remains, bringing the body count to ten. The case was extensively studied until July 2023, when a Manhattan architect named Rex Heuermann was arrested and charged with killing three of the Gilgo Four. And so it seems that, 27 years after the death of the first victim, the mystery of the Gilgo Beach killings may have been solved.
From 2011 to 2012, the “Volga[q] Maniac” was taking the lives of elderly women who lived in low-cost apartment buildings within and around the Volga and Ural districts of Russia. The assailant pretended to be a utility or social services worker to gain access to their homes. Then they fatally attacked and robbed the victims. In 2020, after years of false leads, DNA evidence and shoe print analysis led the police to Tagirov, who had a criminal history of theft. After initially admitting to the crimes, he later withdrew his statement and blamed being under stress during the confession. In 2024, Tagirov was found guilty of 31 murders, several attempts, and 34 assaults, earning him life imprisonment.
What was the biggest serial killer story the year you were born? Let us know below.
luh-HORE https://www.dictionary.com/browse/lahore
Pakistan = pock-iss-stawn
[b]RASS-myew-sin https://youtu.be/pSkgsar43oU?t=2
BOH-din https://youtu.be/0tRGCTkQVuM?si=LHfZ5egJKZJGTTjR&t=11
EUN-seun jeun (the phonetics don't do this justice) https://youtu.be/I3bM7UWPSk4?si=L-cDXyNQ27520m-r&t=314
[c]I cannot find anything as to how this is pronounced. It either rhymes with "arm" or it's "lar-may" - I think we should go with "rhymes with arm" because it's a safer bet.
[d]Rader = raider https://youtu.be/JPe5GOEBS1Y?si=z3mYwNzYHGclQUcm&t=84
[e]TOH-bin https://youtu.be/JJDgbhj7hAo?si=wQqB9rqx4g9Dz92V&t=58
muh-GLOCK-lin https://youtu.be/JJDgbhj7hAo?si=brsZB-7Rf1I3cKTP&t=334
anja-LEE-kuh klooke (rhymes with duke) https://youtu.be/JJDgbhj7hAo?si=o1cDHX1lxLkm0E-r&t=286
DYE-nuh mick-NICK-ull https://youtu.be/JJDgbhj7hAo?si=aHU3kCBlNN_rjdjd&t=1610
[f]domma-neek https://youtu.be/s_cI-rZ6vog?si=nEEHHaxn8dBE0bdc&t=181
[g]KAWNG ho-seun https://translate.google.ca/?sl=auto&tl=en&text=%EA%B0%95%ED%98%B8%EC%88%9C&op=translate
[h]SOH-wull https://youtu.be/5OeebMR816I?si=yHk028Ikoeaq-uc7&t=65
[i]izz-ree-ull keys https://youtu.be/sVpmxrUZrvc?si=BGaaqCKbfv2sN6k3&t=31
[j]mee-HYLE POP-koff https://translate.google.ca/?sl=auto&tl=en&text=%D0%9C%D0%B8%D1%85%D0%B0%D0%B8%CC%81%D0%BB%20%D0%9F%D0%BE%D0%BF%D0%BA%D0%BE%CC%81%D0%B2&op=translate
ahng-GARSK https://www.dictionary.com/browse/Angarsk
[k]COLE-hepp https://youtu.be/aVBKqK0fOQ4?t=4
Kala = Kayla https://youtu.be/aVBKqK0fOQ4?t=39
[l]DARE-in van https://youtu.be/caeLZswQ0Pg?si=8R34UoYWSCrCizcJ&t=187
I can't find "deon" but I assume it's "DEE-awn / DEE-on"
africa hardy https://youtu.be/caeLZswQ0Pg?si=J54f4h7zAY54ZOty&t=180
[m]vay/veh-RUVV (french) https://youtu.be/g_HVm1-90xk
[n]h'WAWN david ore-TEEZE https://youtu.be/GNUcQH6o4OE?si=3E0Oj28ArwLhU67B&t=3
@ 01:05 eric PEN-yah (spanish) https://www.ksat.com/news/local/2022/11/29/potential-victim-of-accused-serial-killer-testifies-against-former-border-patrol-agent/
[o]HYEWER-min https://youtu.be/9S9UZVNu21w?si=9xnrQg7niW5vLe2Y&t=1
GHILL-goh https://youtu.be/9S9UZVNu21w?si=xcdNGCI56at-Llxp&t=13
[p]RAH-dick https://forvo.com/search/%D0%A0%D0%B0%D0%B4%D0%B8%D0%BA/ru/
tah-GEAR-off https://forvo.com/search/%D0%A2%D0%B0%D0%B3%D0%B8%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%B2/
[q]VAUL-guh https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Volga
YUR-ull https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Ural
2000: Javed Iqbal[a]
Sentenced: March 16, 2000In 1999, a newspaper editor and the police station in Lahore, Pakistan, received disturbing letters. The writer claimed he had abused and taken the lives of 100 underage young men. They finished with their intention to end their own life in a river. However, the water was searched, and nothing was found. A month later, fearing police brutality after claims of being attacked by them previously, Iqbal turned up at a newspaper office and confessed. In 2000, he was sentenced to a brutal execution, akin to how Iqbal had treated his victims. However, government officials stated it wouldn’t be as bad as the judge had deemed. Before it could be enacted, in 2001, Iqbal took his own life.
2001: David Parker Ray
Sentenced: September 20, 2001Sometimes, killers go that extra, terrifying mile with their modus operandi. David Parker Ray modified a trailer that would be labeled his “toy box.” The trailer was soundproofed and filled with instruments for his violence. He would abduct women, abuse them for months in the trailer, and presumably, eventually end their lives, sometimes with accomplices, one of them being his girlfriend, Cynthia Hendy. In 1999, a woman managed to escape the “toy box” after three days and get help from a neighbor. The police immediately arrested Ray and Hendy. On a plea deal, Ray was sentenced to 224 years in jail, while Hendy, who testified against her former partner, got thirty-six years. It’s unknown how many women Ray killed, but some estimates are upwards of sixty.
2002: Terry Rasmussen[b]
Arrested: November 2002Terry Rasmussen earned the moniker Chameleon Killer not because he blended in, but because he went by a number of different aliases. While Rasmussen has only been convicted of one murder, experts believe that he committed at least five. Many peg him as the man behind New Hampshire’s Bear Brook murders of the late 1970s, which encompassed the deaths of four girls, including Rasmussen’s daughter. He died before he could be tried for their deaths. He is also thought to have slain his girlfriend Denise Beaudin in 1981. Finally, he did away with his wife Eunsoon Jun in 2002, and it was for this crime that he was finally arrested and imprisoned. He died in High Desert State Prison in 2010.
2003: Gary Ridgway
Sentenced: December 18, 2003For someone whose IQ apparently tested in the low eighties, Gary Ridgway was amazingly clever. He murdered forty-eight women in Washington state, yet evaded capture for almost twenty years. He hid his victims deep in the woods or the river; he even left other people’s trash near the bodies to confuse investigators. Ridgway was actually a suspect in 1982, soon after the murders began, but there wasn’t enough evidence to charge him until 2001. Ridgway was something of an enigma. He claimed to hate sex workers, but frequently hired them, even while married; he was devoutly religious one moment, murderous the next. Perhaps he’s best summed up in his own words: “Choking is what I did, and I was pretty good at it.”
2004: Larme Price[c]
Sentenced: February 11, 2004In the wake of September 11, 2001, Price’s paranoia spiraled out of control. With a long criminal history and mental health issues, he believed he was being followed and had a tracking device in his hand. In 2003, Price began his spree. Altogether, he took the lives of four people as revenge against those who enacted the 2001 attack. However, only one of his victims was of Middle Eastern descent. Price walked into a police station and told them a person called “Dog” had been responsible. The officers, heavily suspecting Price, met with him the next day, and he confessed to his crimes. In 2004, he was sentenced to 150 years in jail without parole.
2005: Dennis Rader[d]
Arrested: February 25, 2005Having named himself BTK after his modus operandi, for twenty years Rader was a massive thorn in the side of the police in Kansas. Like the infamous Jack the Ripper, he sent mocking letters to the cops and media. But in person, Rader seemed nice. He had a loving family and was president of his local church congregation. His first victim was the Otero family in 1974, and his tenth and last victim was Dolores Davis in 1991. Then he dropped off the map. But in 2004, he began taunting them once again. However, he got sloppy with a floppy disk, and it was traced to his church. In 2005, Rader pleaded guilty and got ten consecutive life sentences.
2006: Charles Cullen
Sentenced: March 2, 2006This is a frightening serial killer and one of the most prolific in American history. Charles Cullen worked as a nurse in various New Jersey hospitals throughout the ‘80s, ‘90s, and early 2000s. And in that time, he killed multiple patients by overdosing them on drugs. His true number of victims is unknown. 29 have been confirmed, but he has personally confessed to killing 40. But even that number may be low; investigators believe that Cullen was responsible for hundreds of deaths. It was noticed that many patients were dying under Cullen’s care, but a national shortage of nurses ensured that he kept finding work. He was finally arrested in December of 2003 and has since been given eighteen life sentences.
2007: Peter Tobin[e]
Sentenced: May 4, 2007In 2006, Pat McLaughlin was a maintenance worker at a church in Glasgow, Scotland. However, that wasn’t his real name. Tobin had used the alias to hide his criminal history of assaulting two teenagers and spending 10 years in jail. After Angelika Kluk’s body was found at the church, Tobin’s identity was discovered, and he was arrested for her murder. In 2007, he was found guilty and sentenced to life with a minimum of 21 years. In 2007 and 2008, the remains of 2 teenagers, Vicky Hamilton and Dinah McNicol, respectively, were found at former homes Tobin lived at. Both had been missing since 1991. Tobin was found guilty of both murders, having his life minimum sentence increased to a whole life order in 2009.
2008: Ronald Dominique[f]
Sentenced: September 23, 2008From the late ‘90s into the 2000s, Louisiana had been experiencing a spike in murders and assaults of men and boys, often Black and sometimes gay, each showing a similar cause of death. This led to the killer being named “The Bayou Strangler.” In 2006, the police arrested Dominique after one man told them he'd escaped a dangerous situation from him. While he denied the allegations, Dominique gave them a blood sample. On the surface, he didn’t look like a killer, as he was short and had heart issues. Yet the DNA sample came back positive for several cases, causing Dominique to confess to 23 murders. In 2008, due to a plea bargain, Dominique was sentenced to eight life imprisonment terms without parole.
2009: Kang Ho-sun[g]
Sentenced: April 22, 2009From 2006 to 2008, women living in Seoul, South Korea, had to live in fear. An unknown man was picking them up from various places, assaulting them, and then taking their lives. The investigation into it led the police to Kang in 2009. During the interrogation, he confessed to killing 8 women. However, in 2005, Kang had escaped a house fire that had taken the lives of his wife and his mother-in-law. While he denied causing the fatal arson, he was found guilty of the crime, totaling his victim number to 10 women. In 2009, Kang was sentenced to execution. However, an informal moratorium in South Korea has halted capital punishment since 1997.
2010: Lonnie David Franklin, Jr.
Arrested: July 7, 2010Active initially in the 1980s, the Grim Sleeper earned his moniker from the extended break that he took between 1988 and the early 2000s. Real name Lonnie Franklin Jr., the Sleeper took his first confirmed victim in 1984. He then claimed a further nine lives, with his final murder occurring on September 11, 1988. He did attack a 30-year-old woman the following November, but she survived. Perhaps fearing the repercussions of her survival, the Sleeper lay dormant for over a decade, his next victim likely being 43-year-old Georgia Mae Thomas on December 28, 2000. It wasn’t until the advent of DNA testing that Franklin was considered a suspect, and he was finally arrested in 2010 - 26 years after taking his first victim.
2011: Anthony Sowell[h]
Sentenced: August 12, 2011In 1990, shortly after being discharged from the US Army, Sowell was sentenced for assaulting a woman. He was released in 2005 and years later began the killing spree that would get him the moniker of “The Cleveland Strangler.” In 2009, after one victim survived and informed the police of her assault, the cops arrived at his Cleveland, Ohio, home. There, they found the remains of 11 women and arrested Sowell. After several delays, the trial got underway in 2011. Sowell was found guilty of the 11 murders, as well as a litany of other crimes. The judge agreed with the jury’s recommendation and sentenced Sowell to capital punishment. However, he passed away naturally in 2021.
2012: Israel Keyes[i]
Arrested: March 13, 2012What’s most terrifying for the police and the public is a killer with no M.O. But to make things worse, how about one who was also trained by the U.S Army? This was the case with Israel Keyes. Across the country, Keyes had set up “kill kits,” which gave him access to equipment wherever he decided to attack someone. After he killed eighteen-year-old Samantha Koenig, the FBI was able to track his bank account use and make an arrest following the demand for a ransom. Once he was in custody, however, it was discovered that Keyes was responsible for the murder of multiple victims. Before he faced trial in 2012, Keyes took his own life, and took with him information that might have been used to solve other cases.
2013: William Clyde Gibson
Sentenced: November 26, 2013During his time in the US Army, Gibson developed substance use issues, leading to being dishonorably discharged. From there, he had stints in jail for several crimes, including theft and assault. This led to many accusations of mental illness, but nothing that was officially confirmed by professionals. In 2012, after Gibson’s mother died, he snapped. Within a few weeks, he had assaulted and murdered 2 women. One of his victims was his mom’s friend, whose body was discovered in Gibson’s home. He confessed to both murders to the cops, plus another he’d done in 2002. In 2013, the jury took less than 20 minutes to find Gibson guilty of one murder. Altogether, he received 2 death sentences and 65 years in jail.
2014: Samuel Little
Sentenced: September 25, 2014In 2019, the FBI confirmed that they’d identified Samuel Little as the most prolific serial killer in US history. After being convicted for slaying three people in 2014, the unsettling extent of his crimes began to leak out over the next few years. By 2018, Little had confessed to killing ninety-three women across the country. Little provided the FBI with details on many of the cases from 1970 to 2005 and even drew the victims from memory to prove he was telling the truth. Before he passed away in 2020, more than sixty of Little’s confessions across at least fourteen states had been confirmed by the authorities.
2015: Mikhail Popkov[j]
Sentenced: January 14, 2015Starting in 1992 and lasting nearly 2 decades, the Russian city of Angarsk and the surrounding area was plagued by a killer known as “The Werewolf” or “The Angarsk Maniac.” Mainly targeting women, the criminal had taken many lives, including a police officer. During an investigation at one of the crime scenes, there were tracks from a vehicle typically used by cops. In 2012, when current and former officers were DNA tested, Popkov’s matched, who was now working as a security guard after leaving the force. In 2015, he was sentenced to life for 22 murders. Over the years since, Popkov has confessed to taking the lives of as many as 86 people, earning him further life sentences and years to his punishment.
2016: Bradley Robert Edwards
Arrested: December 22, 2016Between 1996 and 1997, three women went missing from Claremont, a suburb in Western Australia; two were later found dead. These circumstances made police suspect a serial killer was responsible–but finding that killer would require one of the longest, most expensive investigations in Australian history. Over the following years, numerous suspects were interrogated, watched, and eventually ruled out. Then, a study of fibers from the crime scenes revealed two important facts: what the murderer had been wearing, and what kind of car he drove. Both implicated Bradley Robert Edwards. His DNA also turned out to match samples found under one victim’s fingernails. Edwards was arrested and charged with murder in 2016, and is currently serving a life sentence in prison.
2017: Todd Kohlhepp[k]
Sentenced: May 26, 2017In 1987, as a teenager, Kohlhepp was sentenced to jail for kidnap and assault. Released in 2001, he later became a realtor. In 2016, Kala Brown and Charles David Carver vanished from one of Kohlhepp’s properties. A couple of months later, she was found chained up in a storage container based at the location. Brown told police that Kohlhepp had murdered Carver, assaulted her, and shown her the graves of other victims. The police soon found 2 bodies of a married couple who’d gone missing in 2015. When Kohlhepp was arrested, he confessed to the 3 murders, plus the 2003 killing of 4 people in a motorbike shop. In 2017, a plea bargain got him 7 consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole.
2018: Darren Deon Vann[l]
Sentenced: May 25, 2018In 2013, former US Marine Vann was released from jail after serving 4 years for assault. The next year, the body of Afrikka Hardy was discovered in Hammond, Indiana. The investigation led officials to Vann. During the interrogation, he confessed to Hardy’s murder but also to many others. For several years, a reporter and later a coroner had warned police about a possible serial killer in Gary, Indiana, with up to 18 victims, but their concerns were dismissed. Vann led the police to abandoned houses where he stashed 7 of his victims, mostly in the city of Gary. In 2018, as part of a plea deal, Vann was sentenced to 7 concurrent life sentences without parole.
2019: Robert Hayes
Arrested: September 15, 2019Nicknamed “Squeaky” and with a friendly reputation, Hayes seemed like a good person. However, behind the scenes, he was anything but. From late 2005 to 2006, the bodies of 3 sex workers were found in Daytona Beach, Florida. Hayes was investigated for being “The Daytona Beach Killer.” However, he was dismissed as the criminal profile called for a white man. In 2007, a similar murder happened, then another in 2016, which matched DNA evidence from the Daytona Beach slayings. The DNA was run through an ancestry genetic database, leading to a match for Hayes. In 2019, he was arrested. In 2022, Hayes was sentenced for the Daytona murders to 3 consecutive life sentences without parole. He’s currently awaiting trial for the 2016 murder.
2020: Joseph James DeAngelo
Sentenced: August 21, 2020Police officers are meant to be honorable and find justice for victims, not cause a wake of destruction like Joseph James DeAngelo. In 1976, he began his spree of assaults and burglaries in Sacramento, California. In the space of three years, he had committed fifty attacks. By 1978, DeAngelo progressed by slaying Brian and Katie Maggiore. He morphed into the “Original Night Stalker” and later the “Golden State Killer” before the crimes stopped in 1986. Then, in 2018, the police used genetic genealogy from the DNA found at DeAngelo’s crimes to trace it back to him. In 2020, amongst several charges, he pled guilty to thirteen murders as part of a deal to avoid capital punishment and got a life sentence.
2021: François Vérove[m]
Confession: September 29, 2021From 1986 to 1994, at least 3 females were assaulted and murdered in Paris, France, by the same assailant. Nicknamed the “Pockmarked Man” due to acne scars, the police were stumped for decades. However, during the investigation and witness statements, they realized the killer was an officer. Armed with DNA from the 1987 murder and modern technology, the cops summoned current and former officers to a test in 2021. Shortly after getting the request, Vérove vanished. He’d worked as an officer in Paris for years before retiring in 2019, even appearing on a national game show. Vérove took his own life. As well as his DNA matching, he left a letter to his wife that confessed to committing crimes before stopping in 1997.
2022: Juan David Ortiz[n]
Sentenced: December 7, 2022For 10 years, US Navy veteran Ortiz had an impeccable record as a member of the United States Border Patrol in Texas. In 2018, Erika Peña ran to a state trooper and told them she’d escaped from Ortiz’s vehicle. He was soon connected to the murder of 4 women within 2 weeks, all of whom were sex workers. Ortiz ran from the police after he was approached. However, he was soon found hiding in a parking lot and was arrested. The police believe Ortiz attempted to not be taken alive. The border agent confessed to the 4 murders during the interrogation. However, Ortiz still pleaded not guilty. In 2022, he was found guilty and sentenced to life in jail without parole.
2023: Rex Heuermann[o]
Arrested: July 14, 2023One of the most infamous cold cases of our time was the Gilgo Beach killings. Dating back to 1996, a man did away with at least ten people and dumped their remains in the Gilgo Beach area of Long Island. In December 2010, the remains of four women were found, and they were dubbed The Gilgo Four. Just a few months later, investigators found six more sets of remains, bringing the body count to ten. The case was extensively studied until July 2023, when a Manhattan architect named Rex Heuermann was arrested and charged with killing three of the Gilgo Four. And so it seems that, 27 years after the death of the first victim, the mystery of the Gilgo Beach killings may have been solved.
2024: Radik Tagirov[p]
Sentenced: March 21, 2024From 2011 to 2012, the “Volga[q] Maniac” was taking the lives of elderly women who lived in low-cost apartment buildings within and around the Volga and Ural districts of Russia. The assailant pretended to be a utility or social services worker to gain access to their homes. Then they fatally attacked and robbed the victims. In 2020, after years of false leads, DNA evidence and shoe print analysis led the police to Tagirov, who had a criminal history of theft. After initially admitting to the crimes, he later withdrew his statement and blamed being under stress during the confession. In 2024, Tagirov was found guilty of 31 murders, several attempts, and 34 assaults, earning him life imprisonment.
What was the biggest serial killer story the year you were born? Let us know below.
[a]jaw-VAID https://forvo.com/search/javed/
ICK-ball https://forvo.com/search/Iqbal/luh-HORE https://www.dictionary.com/browse/lahore
Pakistan = pock-iss-stawn
[b]RASS-myew-sin https://youtu.be/pSkgsar43oU?t=2
BOH-din https://youtu.be/0tRGCTkQVuM?si=LHfZ5egJKZJGTTjR&t=11
EUN-seun jeun (the phonetics don't do this justice) https://youtu.be/I3bM7UWPSk4?si=L-cDXyNQ27520m-r&t=314
[c]I cannot find anything as to how this is pronounced. It either rhymes with "arm" or it's "lar-may" - I think we should go with "rhymes with arm" because it's a safer bet.
[d]Rader = raider https://youtu.be/JPe5GOEBS1Y?si=z3mYwNzYHGclQUcm&t=84
[e]TOH-bin https://youtu.be/JJDgbhj7hAo?si=wQqB9rqx4g9Dz92V&t=58
muh-GLOCK-lin https://youtu.be/JJDgbhj7hAo?si=brsZB-7Rf1I3cKTP&t=334
anja-LEE-kuh klooke (rhymes with duke) https://youtu.be/JJDgbhj7hAo?si=o1cDHX1lxLkm0E-r&t=286
DYE-nuh mick-NICK-ull https://youtu.be/JJDgbhj7hAo?si=aHU3kCBlNN_rjdjd&t=1610
[f]domma-neek https://youtu.be/s_cI-rZ6vog?si=nEEHHaxn8dBE0bdc&t=181
[g]KAWNG ho-seun https://translate.google.ca/?sl=auto&tl=en&text=%EA%B0%95%ED%98%B8%EC%88%9C&op=translate
[h]SOH-wull https://youtu.be/5OeebMR816I?si=yHk028Ikoeaq-uc7&t=65
[i]izz-ree-ull keys https://youtu.be/sVpmxrUZrvc?si=BGaaqCKbfv2sN6k3&t=31
[j]mee-HYLE POP-koff https://translate.google.ca/?sl=auto&tl=en&text=%D0%9C%D0%B8%D1%85%D0%B0%D0%B8%CC%81%D0%BB%20%D0%9F%D0%BE%D0%BF%D0%BA%D0%BE%CC%81%D0%B2&op=translate
ahng-GARSK https://www.dictionary.com/browse/Angarsk
[k]COLE-hepp https://youtu.be/aVBKqK0fOQ4?t=4
Kala = Kayla https://youtu.be/aVBKqK0fOQ4?t=39
[l]DARE-in van https://youtu.be/caeLZswQ0Pg?si=8R34UoYWSCrCizcJ&t=187
I can't find "deon" but I assume it's "DEE-awn / DEE-on"
africa hardy https://youtu.be/caeLZswQ0Pg?si=J54f4h7zAY54ZOty&t=180
[m]vay/veh-RUVV (french) https://youtu.be/g_HVm1-90xk
[n]h'WAWN david ore-TEEZE https://youtu.be/GNUcQH6o4OE?si=3E0Oj28ArwLhU67B&t=3
@ 01:05 eric PEN-yah (spanish) https://www.ksat.com/news/local/2022/11/29/potential-victim-of-accused-serial-killer-testifies-against-former-border-patrol-agent/
[o]HYEWER-min https://youtu.be/9S9UZVNu21w?si=9xnrQg7niW5vLe2Y&t=1
GHILL-goh https://youtu.be/9S9UZVNu21w?si=xcdNGCI56at-Llxp&t=13
[p]RAH-dick https://forvo.com/search/%D0%A0%D0%B0%D0%B4%D0%B8%D0%BA/ru/
tah-GEAR-off https://forvo.com/search/%D0%A2%D0%B0%D0%B3%D0%B8%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%B2/
[q]VAUL-guh https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Volga
YUR-ull https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Ural
