Top 10 Terrifying Serial Killers Who Are Free Right Now

This unassuming man once seemed like a stand-up citizen. After finishing school, Nesset quickly became head nurse at a Norwegian nursing home. When the number of deaths in the facility became suspiciously high however, the police got involved. It is suspected that Nesset may have been responsible for up to 138 deaths, but he only admitted to 27 when interrogated. In 1983, he was found guilty of murdering 22 patients and sentenced to 21 years in prison, which was Norway’s longest possible sentence at that time. After just 12 years in prison, he was released on “good behavior” and is now walking the streets under a pseudonym.

Nowadays it seems as if there is a school shooting every month, but this wasn’t the case in 1998 when Johnson and Golden shocked the nation. On March 24, 1998, Johnson, aged 13, and Golden, aged 11, wounded 10 people and killed five after pulling the fire alarm and shooting at the students and teachers who were evacuating the school. They were found guilty of five counts of murder and imprisoned until they reached 21, which was the maximum under Arkansas law. After serving seven and nine years respectively, the two boys, now men, were released. Since then, Johnson has been reincarcerated, but was released in 2015, meaning that both men walk free once again.

Between 1977-84, Abel and Furlan went on a vicious killing spree. The murders included burning a drug addict alive with molotovs, crushing the skulls of two priests, stabbing a waiter 34 times, and hammering a nail into the forehead of another priest. At each crime scene was a pamphlet with Nazi images declaring that the victims were killed for being “sub-human”. After an initial 30-year sentence, both men were released as a result of an appeal process, during which time Furlan fled the country. After his recapture, the two were subsequently sentenced to 27 years. Furlan was released in 2009 and Abel in 2013.

Also known as the Apartheid Killer, Louis Van Schoor was a security guard who was in the employ of businesses in South Africa throughout the mid 1980s. He is suspected to have shot over 100 people and killed 39 while working as a guard. While on duty, he would approach businesses that had a tripped silent alarm and shoot the alleged burglars - almost exclusively people of color. He claims that his killings were not racially motivated, and he likes to refer to himself as a “crime fighter”. Regardless of what he calls himself, he was given 20 years in prison for seven counts of murder, and was released after 12 years served.

The role of the military in any country should be to keep the nation and its citizens safe. In 1994 however, military conscript Mika Muranen brought the war home to Kotka, Finland. Dressed in uniform, he took a crossbow from his house and shot two of his neighbors. The next day, using an assault rifle he had stolen from his military base, he shot a mailman, before fleeing into the woods while shooting at random houses. After he was captured, he was sentenced to life in prison. However, after four previous attempts, he was granted parole in September 2014.

Charlene Gallego, along with her husband Gerald, were serial killers who killed ten people, the majority of whom were teenagers, in the American West between 1978 and 1980. They would abduct random people off the street and keep them as sex slaves before murdering them, earning themselves the moniker of The Love Slave Killers. After being captured, Charlene was offered a plea deal in exchange for testifying against Gerald, and she was subsequently sentenced to 16 years and eight months in prison. While Gerald eventually died in prison while awaiting execution, Charlene was freed in July of 1997.

From September 1997 to June 1998, Rubel (who was then a teenager) murdered six to eight people while high on gasoline vapors. His first victim, a neighbor with disabilities, was reportedly murdered simply because Rubel had an uncontrollable urge to kill someone. Having acquired a taste for murder, Rubel proceeded to kill several more people. Other murders of his include slitting the throat of a 15-year-old girl and decapitating a random passerby with an axe after asking for money. He was sentenced to 8 years, the maximum allowed for a minor, and now allegedly lives in Ukraine.

Among Canada’s most notorious serial killers, Karla Homolka and her husband, Paul Bernardo, were responsible for raping and murdering three women, including Homolka’s sister, Tammy - who they drugged and proceeded to rape until she choked on her own vomit and died. They then kidnapped two more girls off the street and raped, tortured, and murdered them as well. When captured, Homolka struck a plea deal to testify against Bernardo, claiming a diminished role in the murders. However, this was later found to be a lie. She was sentenced to 12 years and was released in 2005. What’s she doing now? Recently she caused an uproar for volunteering at her daughter’s elementary school in Quebec.

Throughout the 1980s, the Lainz Angels of Death were employed as nurse’s aides in Austria. After one of the Angels killed a patient with a morphine overdose, she discovered her lust for power and talked her friends into joining her foray into murder. Over the years, they allegedly killed upwards of 200 patients by holding their noses and filling their mouths with water until they drowned. After being caught discussing their latest kill in a bar, they confessed to 49 of the murders. Their sentences ranged from 15 years to life, but as of 2008, all have been released and are walking free.

Jeffrey Dahmer who? Lopez was a mass murderer who says he raped and killed up to 300 young girls, between the ages of 9 and 12 years old, throughout Colombia, Peru, and Ecuador in the late 70s. He claimed to have killed around three girls a week, and he confessed to murdering over 300. He was found guilty on 110 counts of murder and was sentenced to 16 years in prison, which was Ecuador’s highest form of punishment. After later being held in a psychiatric hospital, he was released on bail in 1998, and disappeared. While he could have been recaptured, he could also be free, or even dead. No one really knows, and isn’t that even more terrifying?