If a person can kill hundreds and calmly go about their lives as if it was just a job, then they are sociopathic at best. Having a uniform on doesn't change a thing. His mindset was no better than someone like the Iceman - that of a cold-blooded, unremorseful murdering bastard who killed for money. In fact, the Iceman had a lot more integrity because he wasn't a coward using a sniper rifle from a mile away.
Amelia Dyer - Britain's worst serial killer The Victorian 'Angel Maker' who murdered 400 babies
Daniel Miller
23 February 2013
She was dubbed the 'Angel Maker', a prolific serial killer responsible for the murders of around 400 babies, horrific crimes that sent a shock wave through 19th century Britain. Amelia Dyer preyed on the down-on-their-luck, desperate unmarried mothers who paid her to have their children adopted in the naive belief she would find them a better life.
But there would be no fairytale endings, instead this despicable woman simply took the money before strangling the helpless infants with dressmaking tape and dumping their bodies in the River Thames. For over 30 years Dyer was able to conduct her grisly trade with apparent impunity. Little wonder that she is now believed to be Britain's worst ever serial killer.
Her crimes have come to light once again after more than 2.5million criminal records from between 1770 and 1934 were placed online by the National Archives. The intriguing records chronicle the crimes and punishments of some of the worst murderers and villains ever to roam these lands. But even among this company of loathsome individuals Dyer stands apart.
She began to conduct her grisly trade in Bristol in the late 1860s, opening a house of confinement in the suburb of Totterdown where she took in unmarried pregnant women who had nowhere else to go. Some would ask her to smother their babies at birth, crimes that went unchallenged as Victorian doctors were unable to tell the difference between suffocation and still-birth.
Then Dyer moved began offering a fostering service, which involved her simply drugging the babies with laudanum, a powerful opiate, to keep them quiet while she slowly starved them. This went on for almost a decade until she was found guilty of infant neglect and sentenced to a paltry six-months in prison.
By the time she came out she had a developed a new business plan. The logic was simple; why deal with all the bother of actually looking after the children when she could offer a one-off full adoption service and simply kill them. She moved to Reading and soon found her services in high demand - eyewitnesses reported seeing as many as six babies a day coming into her home. Police would later find evidence of around 20 children who had been entrusted to her care in the two months before her arrest.
She was finally arrested following the discovery of the body of an infant in the reeds of the Thames. An address on the parcel paper led the police to her rented terraced house. Inside her house of horrors they were met with the stench of rotting flesh emanating from the kitchen pantry and from a trunk under her bed. They discovered baby clothes, vaccination papers as well as letters and receipts for her newspaper advertisements offering adoption services.
A search of the River Thames was hastily ordered. After 50 bodies had been discovered she admitted to police: 'You'll know all mine by the tape around their necks.
Her case was so sensational that songs were written about her and Britain's adoption and child protection laws had to be toughened up in response to the public outcry. Dyer was hanged at Newgate Gaol, near the Old Bailey in London, in 1896. She was 58.
Her Prison Commission file records her last moments: 'On account of her weight and the softness of the textures, rather a short drop was given. It proved to be quite sufficient.
Hers is one of more than 2.5million records from 1770 to 1934 have been put online, chronicling the fates of fraudsters, counterfeiters, thieves, murderers and drunkards.
Canadian cannibal' who 'stabbed to death student then had sex with his corpse on tape' collapses while video evidence is shown in pre-trial court hearing Luka Rocco Magnotta, 30, fell to the ground and curled into the fetal position in a packed Montreal courtroom today
19 March 2013
A Canadian porn actor accused of dismembering his Chinese lover and mailing the body parts to political parties and schools has collapsed in court today, during the second week of his preliminary hearing. Luka Magnotta, 30, has pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder in the gruesome slaying and dismemberment of Jun Lin last May. He is accused of killing the university student and posting a video online that shows him stabbing and having sex with the dismembered corpse.
Wearing a black sweater with colored stripes, Magnotta appeared distressed during a video evidence session this morning. The evidence is subject to a publication ban, until it is determined that there is enough evidence to go to trial. He held his hand over his mouth and asked the guard in his glass-enclosed defendant's box for a five-minute break. He stood up and collapsed on the floor just after the judge agreed to an extended lunch break.
According to Canadian Press, he was all of a sudden lying on his right side, crumpled into a fetal position, in the courtroom, still handcuffed and shackled. 'You might want to make room for an ambulance,' the Crown prosecutor, Louis Bouthillier, told the guards outside the courtroom. 'Somebody's collapsed.' Canadian Press said Magnotta's eyes were fixed on the ground not on the screen where the, presumably gruesome, video evidence was being shown. When he began covering his mouth, his lawyers came to check on him and 10 minutes into that segment of the hearing he asked the baliff to his side to request the break.
As well as first-degree murder, Magnotta is also facing four other charges relating to the case. He is accused of dismembering Lin and mailing parts of his body across Canada, before leading police on an international manhunt before he was finally arrested in Germany. Lin's parents were not in the courtroom on Tuesday morning. His father has attended the preliminary hearing, which began March 11, sporadically but has not stayed in the courtroom when the most graphic evidence has been heard.
The porn actor first appeared in court last Monday as his lawyers unsuccessfully sought to close pre-trial proceedings to the press and public. Magnotta has observed all hearings from a glass enclosure in the packed Montreal court room. During the proceedings, which are expected to last another one to two weeks, prosecutors are outlining the case against 30-year-old Magnotta and seek to persuade a judge they have enough evidence for the case to go to trial.
Also in the courtroom was Diran Lin, father of victim Jun Lin, whose dismembered body parts were mailed to schools and political parties in the Canadian capital Ottawa and Vancouver in a crime that shocked Canada and gained international notoriety. 'This is the worst thing a family can endure. We are empty,' the Journal de Montreal quoted Diran Lin as saying in an interview ahead of the hearing. 'We had so much hope for Jun Lin.'
Police say the video, which they believe is genuine, showed a man stabbing his victim to death before dismembering the corpse and then eating part of the body. Lin's hands and feet were mailed in May to the offices of political parties in Ottawa and to schools in Vancouver. His torso was found in a pile of garbage behind Magnotta's Montreal apartment, and his head was discovered in a Montreal park in July. Lin was a student at Concordia University in Montreal.
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Not a serial killer - as far as we know - but still quite a story
The secrets of my friend the Moors murderer For 25 years he has been visiting Britain's most notorious killer, now Ian Brady's only confidant - and heir - reveals all
Nikki Murfitt
22 June 2013
In the half light of a sparse, windowless room in Ashworth secure hospital, Ian Brady is counting and re-counting the pile of plates stacked beside a haphazard pile of papers on the tabletop in front of him. The air is thick with the pungent fug of the Gauloises cigarettes he chain-smokes as he starts to line up, then obsessively rearrange, a flask of coffee, a milk jug and a sugar bowl. His scrawny wrists jut out beneath threadbare shirt cuffs, as he purses his lips and fiddles with the feeding tube protruding from his left nostril while a medic measures out his two-hourly dose of sedative.
This is Britain’s most reviled prisoner, the killer who, with his lover Myra Hindley, murdered Pauline Reade, 16, John Kilbride, 12, Keith Bennett, 12, Lesley Ann Downey, ten, and Edward Evans, 17, between 1963 and 1965. Sitting opposite is Dr Alan Keightley who, for more than two decades has been Brady’s sole visitor, confidant and his legal heir... An eccentric academic, Keightley has spent 25 years cultivating Brady. No one knows him better. The 69-year-old, a former head of religious studies at King Edward VI College, Stourbridge, first came into contact with Brady at the behest of Ann West, the mother of Lesley Ann Downey, one of the victims of the Moors Murders, as they soon became known.
‘Knowing Brady’s interest in religion she thought that if I wrote to him and befriended him he might reveal information,’ Keightley explains. ‘He and I corresponded a lot before he finally invited me to visit him in Ashworth.’ Keightley has been reluctant to speak about the relationship; it is not something that Brady wants publicised. Today, though, speaking at his Black Country home, the retired lecturer is offering an extraordinary insight into the mind of a man whose crimes, even now, hold the public imagination in their grip.
Since that first visit in 1988, Keightley has amassed thousands of hours of taped conversations and, with Brady’s consent and co-operation, these prison recordings have been turned into the Moors Murderer’s autobiography. The 100,000-word manuscript, a sensational account of Brady’s depraved crimes, now sits in the loft above his £150,000 terrace house in the village of Cradely, near Dudley.
Keightley has promised that he will not publish until after Brady’s death, but the manuscript, he reveals, will claim that his killings went beyond the five innocent children murdered on Saddleworth Moor, and that with Hindley he killed nine people in all. It will ‘answer’ the questions that have haunted his victims’ families and taunted police for more than half a century. It will, he claims, pinpoint the spot where Keith Bennett is buried, and it will outline in graphic detail the role that Hindley played in the sexual acts inflicted upon their victims.
‘The book has all the secrets,’ explains Keightley. ‘It shows without a doubt that Myra Hindley was no bystander bullied into the killings by what she always claimed was Brady’s Svengali-like hold over her.’ Hindley died in 2002. ‘It will reveal Brady’s childhood, how he grew up and the influences that led him to the path that he chose. The manuscript is upstairs in the attic, although I’ve already agreed a deal with a publisher. It’s an amazing story and one that should be told, not just because of the secrets it reveals, but because it gives insight into the life and mind of Ian Brady.’
This week Brady, now 75, will take the stand during the second week of his mental health tribunal in the hope of being declared sane. If he succeeds he will be moved to a regular prison from Ashworth in Merseyside, where he is serving a life sentence. Once there, he believes, he will be allowed to starve himself to death. Brady has been on hunger strike since 1999 and is being force-fed under secure hospital regulations that will not apply in an ordinary jail.
The hearing, held in the hospital, is being relayed to a Manchester court through a video link. It is the first time the public has glimpsed Brady since he was jailed in 1966. But as one of the small group of hangers-on who surround Brady, Keightley is in the dubious position of knowing him better than anyone. Gulping a glass of white wine in the living room of the home he shares with his wife Joan, 68, he says: ‘Once you are accepted by him there is nothing you can’t ask him.
‘He has given me all his property, all his papers, everything. He has made me his heir so that everything that exists at the time of his death will go to me. Because he trusts me. As well as the murders, we talk about current affairs and books. He likes two of the books I have written: Wittgenstein, Grammar And God and Into Every Life A Little Zen Must Fall. We have discussed them.’ Dressed all in black and wearing a blond wig, Keightley cuts a strange figure. But he is a serious man, a committed Methodist, and it is beyond doubt that Brady has placed considerable trust in him.
Their first meeting set the pattern for three-weekly visits that would continue until several months ago, when Brady fell too ill for visiting. Even now there are numerous daily phone calls between the two. After rigorous security checks, Keightley was ushered into a dimly lit room filled with cigarette smoke. Then, nervously he sat down at a table opposite Brady, knee to knee. For the first few minutes the killer just stared silently at him.
Then he spoke: ‘How many instruments of murder do you suppose there are in this room?’ Brady asked in his Glaswegian accent, gazing at the teaspoons and mugs on the table. He rocked back and forth on his chair. Keightley was stunned. ‘I just said “Sorry, Ian, I don’t know the answer to the question”, and he said, “Well, what are those legs on the chair for?” ‘I don’t know whether he intended to shock me – Ian Brady is a very, very complicated man and no one will ever fathom him. ‘I’d usually see him at about 2pm then we would talk for six or eight hours at a time,’ says Keightley. ‘I would take him cigarettes and he would always give me a similar gift of some kind, chocolate, that he’d managed to get his hands on.’
Soon, the pair settled into a routine. Brady would provide a list of items he required including a flask of coffee, milk, sugar and the books they were to discuss, usually obscure works of philosophy. ‘He had a thing about lists because when he and Hindley murdered someone he would have a checklist with seven points on it. For example, had he lost a button in the struggle? Had they burnt their clothes and shoes?’ Keightley explains. I asked him once whether he was a psychopath. He said no, but he was delusional, and thought things were real that were not. At every meeting we would always sit knee to knee. Ian’s mood would depend on the time of day. His medication had to be administered every two hours. Sometimes, just before his chloral hydrate, a sedative, was due he would become less willing to talk. He would fold his arms, purse his lips and I was never sure if he was angry or what he was feeling really. Then once he’d taken the drugs he’d stare at me for a few minutes, then perk up again.’
Brady’s eyesight was poor after he suffered childhood measles so, at his request, the lights were left off in the room where they met, even in winter. Having become Brady’s confidant, Keightley smuggled the manuscript of the murderer’s book on serial killers, Gates Of Janus, out of hospital, hidden among sheaves of paper. He even wrote the foreword for it. ‘As I was getting up to leave that day, he sneaked a little gift for me on top of it. He always liked to exchange gifts whenever I visited him. He can be very generous as long as you are loyal but he regards disloyalty as worse than murder.’
Perhaps with this in mind, Dr Keightley glances nervously at his watch. ‘I shouldn’t be talking, I don’t want to make Ian Brady angry,’ he says. While repulsed by Brady’s crimes, he appears in some way to be in thrall. He describes him as a ‘hugely intelligent man’ and is keen to depict Brady’s ‘caring’ side. Keightley says that Brady offered him sympathy and support when his son Paul, 38, was found suffering serious head injuries in a street in Bath in January this year.
Wary of scuppering the publishing deal, Dr Keightley refuses to be drawn further on the book’s content or the name of the publisher. But one publishing insider who has had sight of the 100,000-word manuscript says it does not seek to question Brady and Hindley’s crimes. ‘It takes Brady’s point of view and puts it out there,’ he says. ‘It contains graphic details about the individual killings and the sexual abuse of child victims in an extremely unsettling manner. Its aim is to directly implicate Myra Hindley in the sexual abuse of children. It describes in horrifying detail what Brady claims she did to the victims. Clearly it is his attempt to further blacken her name and undermine her previous accounts of her part in the Moors Murders, in which she portrayed herself as very much under Brady’s control.’
As to the veracity of its contents, opinions are divided. ‘It could be true, it could be lies,’ says the publishing source. ‘From what we know of Ian Brady it will always be difficult to tell. It will certainly put more details out there but at the same time increase the agony of the victims’ families. What is true is that it is utterly indefensible.’
There is no doubt in Dr Keightley’s mind that he has been chosen as the man who will reveal the full extent of the Moors Murderer’s evil crimes. But police think it is highly likely that Brady has been merely toying with a naive intellectual who has been taken in by and admires Brady’s considerable persuasive powers. For his part, Keightley is aggrieved that the police are refusing to take seriously the information he has gathered after 25 years of prison visits.
There is also the last, cruel legacy of Brady’s crimes: his continuing refusal to reveal where he buried 12-year-old victim Keith Bennett, whose mother Winnie Johnson was haunted by the mystery until her death last year. Martin Bottomley, head of Greater Manchester police’s cold case review unit, points out: ‘We have interviewed Dr Keightley twice and it’s apparent Brady has given him a lot of correspondence and a manuscript upon which he plans to capitalise after Brady’s death. He has provided us with the vaguest of locations for Keith’s burial site but this was unsubstantiated. The truth is that only one person knows where Keith is buried and he refused to tell, preferring to taunt Keith’s loved ones, assisted by those who seek to profit from his manipulative scheming.’
Brady is in the rare position of trying to convince Judge Robert Atherton and the tribunal panel that he is not mad, just bad beyond all measure. Perhaps he will succeed. And if, somehow, he manages to starve himself to death in prison, Brady will no doubt regard it as a victory of sorts, a final act of defiance. Certainly he will have achieved what appears to be a life-long aim: of leaving behind a thousand unbearable questions about those terrible days which have poisoned the remaining lives of all who knew his victims. And then, it seems, we must turn to a Black Country academic in a wig to give us the best answers that he can.
32 serial killers with high IQs
Daniel CalderSt.
Petersburg Conservative Examiner
November 6, 2013
1) Ted Kaczynski (A.K.A. The Unabomber) - Ted Kaczynski is hard to top. Labeled not merely a serial killer, but a 'domestic terrorist' by the FBI, Kaczynski skipped the 5th grade after testing 167 on an IQ test. He entered Harvard at the age of 16 where he earned his undergraduate degree by age 20. He earned his PhD in mathematics at the University of Michigan, where he focused on geometric function theory. After this, he was hired by the University of Berkeley, becoming their youngest professor . He won the University of Michigan's Sumner B. Myers prize, thanks to a PhD thesis on boundary functions, recognized as that year's best mathematics dissertation.
View all 19 photos
View all 19 photos
Ted Kaczynski resigned not long after being hired. He saved up money by working odd jobs until he could afford to purchase a small piece of land, during which time he taught himself various survival skills in order to become self-sufficient. Unfortunately, the land around him was being continually destroyed by industrial development. Ted Kaczynski's beliefs became progressively radicalized through the study of political philosophy, and he eventually decided that the only way to stop the progressive destruction of the environment was through violence.
He eluded capture for decades, killing 3 people and injuring 23. He wrote a "Manifesto" for his ideologies, which would eventually be published in The Washington Post and The New York Times. This would be his undoing. His brother David recognized Ted's writing style and contacted the authorities. Linguistic analysis of Ted's previous papers confirmed with overwhelming probability that both essays had been written by the same person, and authorities were given a search warrant to investigate Ted's living quarters.
Kaczynski was arrested in 1996 at his cabin in Montana. A wealth of bomb-making materials were found, as well as writings that spoke of experiments in bomb construction, and even an actual live bomb, which he appeared to be preparing to mail. Numerous charges were brought against him, including murder, and the transportation of bombs. He was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
2) Edmund Kemper - Born in 1948, Edmund Kemper began his career in murder quite early. He exhibited early signs of sociopathy, stabbing his cat to death by the age of 13. At the tender of age 15, he killed both of his grandparents. Uncertain of what to do, he called his mother, who advised him to call the police. Kemper contacted the authorities and he was sent to Atascadero State Hospital, where psychological tests recorded an IQ score of 136. In a later IQ test, he tested at 145(Russell, 2002).
Edmund Kemper was released from the mental hospital at age 21, in 1969. While at community college, Kemper began to pick up female hitchikers. It is at this point that he began his serial killing. He picked up two hitchhikers, one of whose heads was eventually found in the woods. Kemper said that he had killed both of them, dismembered them, and engaged in necrophilic activity. Edmund Kemper disposed of the remains of one of his victims by throwing her dismembered body parts into the ocean, which eventually washed ashore.
Kemper continued killing female hitchhikers and only ceased his murder spree after killing his mother. He bludgeoned her to death with a hammer and then cut her throat. He then removed her larynx, put it in the garbage disposal, and used her decapitated head as a dartboard. He then killed his mother's friend as well, shortly before turning himself in. He asked for the death penalty but was instead given 8 consecutive life sentences. He currently resides at California Medical Facility.
3) Ted Bundy - Born in 1946, Ted Bundy was a serial killer who confessed to over 30 murders, and may have been guilty of many more. Experts estimate that the number of his victims may be over 100. He became a media sensation not simply for his prolific murder career, but for his deadly combination of physical attractiveness, intelligence and charm, possessing a reported IQ score of 136. This is no genius score, but it is quite a bit above average, and not normally the degree of intelligence one might associate with a serial killer. He was also a necrophiliac, oftentimes returning the bodies of the women he had killed days after having done so.
Ted Bundy exhibited signs of sociopathy early on. By his teenage years, he was a compulsive thief and peeping tom. Bundy graduated from the University of Washington with a BA in psychology, and was accepted to law school with the help of the governor of Washington, with whom he had become familiar from involvement in political matters.
In 1974, after Ted moved to Utah, women started disappearing. Rumors began about the victims having been last seen with a man named "Ted." After being pulled over by the police, he was arrested when police discovered burglary tools in the trunk of his car. His criminality was first confirmed in 1975, when Carol DaRonch, a woman he had kidnapped, escaped. He was sentenced to up to 15 years in prison. A few years later, he was charged with murder for the death of another woman.
Ted Bundy made his first of two prison escapes when he jumped out of the window of the courthouse library. Though recaptured about a week later, he escaped from prison again in 1977 through a hole he had made in the ceiling of his cell. During his escape, Bundy broke into the Chi Omega sorority house at FSU (Florida State University) and killed two of its residents. Before his capture, he would also murder a 12 year old girl. This was his last murder. He was finally captured and sentenced to death, eventually being executed in 1989 at Florida State Prison.
4) Andrew Cunanan - born in 1969, Cunanan engaged in a killing spree resulting in 5 victims. He is perhaps most well-known for having killed Gianna Versace, the famous fashion designer. Andrew Cunanan's murder spree came to a violent end in Miami, where he committed suicide by gunshot.
Cunanan was charming, attractive, and intelligent, revealed to have had an IQ of 147. He socialized with older, wealthy gay men in the "Castro" distinct of San Francisco. He worked as a prostitute in his teen years, and soon began to star in pornography films. Cunanan killed his former lover and fled across the country to Miami, Florida, where he killed 3 more men. Finally, he killed Gianni Versace before committing suicide in a houseboat as police closed in on him.
5) Joel Rifkin - Born in 1959, Rifkin was a habitual underachiever. He rarely fit in socially, and although he never did well academically, he has a recorded IQ of 128. He frequented prostitutes, and would oftentimes fantasize about murdering women. His fantasies turned to reality in 1989, when he killed his first victim. He had brought a prostitute to his home, where he injured her badly by beating her, before strangling her to death. He claimed his second victim, also a prostitute, in a similar manner.
Rifkin owned a landscaping business, whose job site he used to hide many of his 17 victims. His last victim was Tiffany Bresciani, whom he strangled and put in his trunk. Unfortunately for Joel Rifkin, police attempted to pull him over for missing a rear license plate. A high-speed chase ensued until Rifkin crashed into a pole. Police detected the odor of Tiffany's corpse and Rifkin was arrested.
Rifkin confessed to all 17 murders, yet he pleaded not guilty during the trial. He was found guilty of seven of the murders and sentenced to 183 years in prison. He is now serving his unending sentence at the Clinton Correctional Facility.
6) Jeffrey Dahmer - One of the most infamous serial killers in history, Jeffrey Dahmer was born in 1960. He killed a total of 17 men, claiming that he could trace his sociopathic and necrophilic tendencies to as early as age 14. He was also known to cannibalize some of his victims. He claimed his first victim in 1978, after having sex with a hitchhiker, before beating him to death with a barbell and dismembering his corpse. He began a term at Ohio State University. Though tested with an IQ of 145, he quickly dropped out, possibly because of his alcoholism, which at this point was becoming severe.
Dahmer joined the Army, which discharged him because of his drinking. He ran into problems with the law, getting arrested in 1981 for disorderly conduct, and then again in 1986 for performing lewd acts in front of two young boys. He claimed another victim a year later, whom he killed in his hotel after they had gotten drunk together. He dismembered the man's corpse and simply through the remains in the garbage.
Over a period of 13 years, he would murder primarily gay, black men, luring them home with promises of sex, before drugging and killing them. He would then sexually molest the dead bodies of his victims, before dismembering them. Jeffrey Dahmer was also known to keep the skulls of his victims as trophies.
Jeffrey Dahmer was kicked out of his grandmother's house because of his continual drunkenness. He would kill two more people around the same time in 1988. In one particularly infamous episode, he molested a 13-year-old boy. He pleaded guilty to the charges and asked for leniency, which was granted. He could work a day job, provided he returned to prison at night. Dahmer then molested the 14 year old younger brother of the boy he had previously molested, though he was able to convince police that his drugged victim was a drunk 19-year-old lover of his. In an astonishing miscarriage of justice, officers escorted Jeffrey Bahmer and the boy back to Dahmer's home, where he killed him.
In 1991, officers found a man wandering around the street with a pair of handcuffs on one of his wrists. They investigated the situation and were told that he had been drugged, handcuffed and restrained. They were led to Dahmer's apartment, where they found pictures of dismembered bodies, and a refrigerator full of various body parts.
Jeffrey Dahmer confessed to all the murders and pleaded guilty on all counts. Serving 15 consecutive life sentences as of 1992, he was murdered only two years into his sentence by another prisoner.
7) Juan Corona - one of America's worst and most notorious killers, Corona killed 25 farmworkers around 40 years ago, claiming that he was justified because his victims were trespassing drunks. Four of the bodies were never actually identified. While he confessed to the crimes, he does not seem to have exhibited any remorse for it. Like many serial killers, Corona preyed on those on the margins of society, who oftentimes had few relatives, and about as many sympathizers.
He earned the nickname "The Machete Killer" due to the fact that he killed virtually all of his victims with a machete, oftentimes splitting their heads open. Though obviously deranged, he was no dummy, sporting an IQ of 130.
8) Kristen Gilbert - Practicing nurse who killed her patients. Fellow nurses became suspicious when 4 of her patients died. Stranger yet, 3 had almost experienced heart attacks. A combination of a shortage of epinephrine, plus finding epinephrine in the tissues of these patients (who were not prescribed the drug), led to an investigation. Gilbert presumably called in a bomb threat as a diversion, but she was arrested and served 15 months in prison. Testimony against the nurse was quite overwhelming. A security guard with whom she had been having an affair testified that Gilbert had admitted to him that she had deliberately killed her patients. Another nurse admitted that she had heard one of the patients, who had died under Gilbert's care, crying out that Gilbert was killing him. She was convicted of multiple murder charges and sentenced to life in prison. While her precise IQ is not mentioned, it is reported as being very high.
9) Charlene Williams - Charlene Williams is well-known for having been involved in the famous "sex-slave murders" of 1978-1980. Williams would lure women into her husband's car so he could rape and murder them, claiming 10 victims before their arrest in 1980. Charlene Williams spent around 17 years in prison, but has since been released.
Strictly speaking, it was her husband who committed the murders, though Charlene aided in the acquisition of the his victims. She pleaded guilty to counts of first and second degree murder, though was able to receive the minimum sentence of 16 years and 18 months for her crimes by testifying against her husband. A smart woman all other things considered, she is reported to have an IQ of 160.
10) Michael Ross - Ross grew up in an unstable environment. which perhaps ripened him for serial killer. Or perhaps his parents' unstable behavior was just indicative of his having been a bad seed. His mother had serious psychiatric problems and would both physically and psychologically abuse him. She was institutionalized twice, and it is possible that his uncle sexually abused him during this period. His uncle would commit suicide not long after. In spite of these undesirable circumstances, Ross did well in his studies and studied agricultural economics at Cornell University. Intelligent and interpersonally adept, with a reported IQ of 122, he was nonetheless beset with disturbing sexual fantasies.
He wound up in jail not long after graduating, having assaulted a young woman. That same year, the body of a girl he had previously murdered was discovered. He attempted suicide after his first murder but opted out. Instead of killing himself, he decided to continue killing others. He strangled and raped another victim, a 17-year-old girl walking to her home.
He eventually attacked an off-duty policewoman. The woman fought him off and summoned her co-workers to assist her. He was charged with assault but was bailed out shortly thereafter, at which point he underwent a psychiatric examination. Unfortunately, no serious action was taken to subdue his urges or treat the problem. It was not long before he would kill again.
Michael continued to strangle and rape women and it was clear to the police force that a serial killer was operating in the area. Ross was brought in for questioning and eventually confessed to most of the murders. He was given multiple life and death sentences. Michael admitted furthermore that he had molested multiple girls in his neighborhood as a teenager. He complained that his urges to sadistic behavior were overwhelming and uncontrollable. Nonetheless, rather than pleading isanity, he confessed his guilt and asked for the death penalty, which he believed he deserved. Michael's wish was granted in 2005, when he was executed by lethal injection.
11) John Wayne Gacy - John Wayne Gacy was convicted of having killed 33 people. He is one of the most notorious serial killers in American history. He experienced a tragically abusive childhood at the hands of his father, who would beat his children witih a razor strap. Culturally, he became a cultural icon and gave rise to the image of the "killer clown", due to the fact that he would perform as a clown around the same kinds of people he would kill: young males. He would sometimes even dress as a clown during his murders.
John Wayne Gacy had been accused of sexual assault by numerous males prior to the discovery of his career as a serial killer. While he had initially been sentenced to 10 years in prison for sexually assaulting two teenager males, he was released for parole before two years had even transpired. John Wayne Gacy confessed to the crimes but claimed thtat an alter ego had committed the crime and that he was not responsible. Questions about whether or not Gacy should have been found not guilty by reason of insanity raged.
He was convicted in 1980 and executed around 14 years later in 1994, having been given 21 life sentences and 12 death sentences. While he was no genius, he had a recorded IQ of 118, quite a bit above average.
12) David Berkowitz - One of America's most notorious serial killers, David Berkowitz murdered 6 people in New York in the late 1970s. He began killing in 1976, when he shot two women, killing one and seriously injuring the other. Earlier that year, he had shot a man in the head, causing major skull injuries.
He became infamous for using a .44 caliber handgun. He is also particularly known for having taunted the authorities, leaving notes for them. A year later, he attacked another couple, killing one and seriously injuring another. This event, however, would prove to be his undoing. A witness had noticed that the getaway car had had a parking ticket. Berkowitz's car was one of the few cars to have received a parking ticket the previous day.
Berkowitz admitted to his murders, but insisted that his neighbor's dog had told him to kill people. Like Gacy, major controversies surrounded Berkowitz's sanity. In any case, he pleaded guilty to all the killings and received 25-life sentences for each. Like John Wayne Gacy, David Berkowitz has a recorded IQ of 118.
13) Richard Starrett - Born in 1959, Starrett's deviant behavior may have partially been the result of brain damage, having received quite a few head injuries when he was young. He was also reported to have behaved unusually, oscillating between trances and hyperactivity. He began to exhibit sociopathic traits in his teen years when he would force women to perform sexual acts on him. He probably began his murder spree in 1988 when he sh ot a woman in the head. He killed again a year later, and was given numerous life sentences. Authorities suspect Richard of having been involved in other murders as well. He had a recorded IQ of 124.
14) Richard Loeb and Nathan Leopold - Nathan Leopold was born in 1904, and Richard Loeb, a year later in 1905. He and Richard Loeb committed a famous murder of a 14-year-old male in 1924. Leopold was a child prodigy who reportedly spoke his first words at 4 months, and possessed a recorded IQ of 210. Leopold graduated college with honors from Harvard in 1923. Richard Loeb had an IQ estimated at between 160 and 168.
Leopold and Loeb became fast friends and probably developed a sexual relationship. They were preoccupied with attempting to get away with committing the perfect crime. The two lured their victim into their car before beating him to death with a chisel. They then disposed of his body in a lake. The father of the boy had contacted police before delivering the ransom the two had demanded. Both were arrested and confessed to the murder and both received a life sentence. Leopold was granted parole in 1958, at which point he fled to Puerto Rico, where he spent the rest of his days teaching mathematics at the University of Puerto Rico. He eventually died of a heart attack. Richard Loeb, on the other hand, was murdered by his cellmate in prison.
15) Gary Heidnik - Heidnik was a notorious American serial killer and rapist who was found guilty of killing 6 women. He dropped out of high school and joined the army, obtaining his G.E.D. shortly thereafter. He was notably intelligent, reported IQ of 130. He excelled in basic training, but was discharged after he was diagnosed with a gastrointestinal disease as well as mental illness. He next became a nurse practitioner but was fired from his position as a psychiatric nurse after he proved unreliable and interacted poorly with the patients.
Mental illness seems to have run in his family. His mother committed suicide, and his brother was in and out of mental institutions, after himself attempting suicide numerous times. The following years saw numerous charges brought against him. He was charged with rape and false imprisonment, and spent 3 years in a mental institution. During over 2 of those years, he is reported to have not said a word.
He began his serial killing in 1986. He would kidnap women, torture, and murder them. After his arrest, he was found guilty of murder and sentenced to death. He was executed by lethal injection in 1999.
16) Laurence Bittaker - Born in in 1940, Lawrence dropped out of high school and was frequently in trouble with the police. He was released from the California Youth Authority but quickly got into trouble again when he violated the Interstate Motor Vehicle Theft Act. After he was released for this, he was arrested again for robbery and sentenced to 1-15 years in state prison. A psychiatric hospital found him highly intelligent, possessing a reported IQ of 138. Nevertheless, he was also considered severely mentally ill.
He continued to rack up various charges: theft, burglary, parole violations, leaving the scene of an accident, and so on. His apparently first murder took place when he attempted to steal a steak by putting it in his pants. When an employee tried to stop him, he stabbed the man to death. Prison psychiatrists labeled him a sociopath who had little or no impulse control or remorse, and was virtually beyond rehabilitation. Nevertheless, he was paroled in 1978.
Bittaker struck again when he kidnapped a 16-year-old girl and strangled her to death. He killed another 18-year-old girl by stabbing her with an ice-pick and strangling her, before throwing her off of a cliff. Lawrence Bittaker and his partner afterwards took 2 girls hostages and killed them both with the same modus operandi: strangling and stabbing them with an ice-pick, before throwing them off of a clip. They next killed a 16-year-old girl, on Halloween night. Bittaker's murder partner, Ray Norris, confessed to the crimes after being arrested for selling marijuana. Bittaker was charged with numerous felonies, including 5 charges of murder. He was given a death sentence.
17) Caroll Edward Cole - A notorious American serial killer. Born in 1938, he quickly began his career as a criminal as a thief in his teen years. It was not long, howiever, that his impulses would become more violent. He would oftentimes fantasize about strangling women. After marrying, he became suspicious that his wife had been cheating on him, so he burned down the building in which he believed the infidelity had taken place. After spending time in prison for arson, he attempted to strangle an 11-year-old child and spent 5 years in prison. Following his release, he checked himself into a mental hospital after attempting to kill 2 more women. Doctors took note of his violent fantasies, but did not seem to do anything about it.
He began his murder career in 1971, strangling a woman to death. He remarried, but strangled his new wife to death in 1979. He killed a few more women before being arrested. He confessed to the murders, claiming around 14 women as his victims. He was executed in 1985. Although he was a nasty fellow, he was exceedingly intelligent, with a reported IQ of 152.
18) Carlton Gary - Carlton was convicted of killing older women between 1977 and 1978 in New York. His behavioral problems may have been exacerbated by possible brain damage he experienced as a child. He began criminal behavior in his teen years and continued them as an adult.He claimed his first victim in 1970 when he strangled an 85-year-old old woman to death. Charged with robbery, he was sent to prison until 1975, at which point he murdered another woman.
He was sent back to prison in 1977 on a parole violation but escaped. He quickly resumed his murder career, strangling a 60-year-old woman to death with a stocking. Gary murdered a few more women and was eventually arrested in 1978, and sentenced to 21 years for armed robbery. It was not until later, however, that he was convicted of murder, at which point he was placed on Georgia's death row. While no precise IQ score is given, it is known to be very high.
19) Peter Manuel - Born in 1927, Manuel became known as the Beast of Birkenshaw. He committed numerous sexual assaults at the age of 16 and served almost a decade in prison. It was not until 1956 that he began his killing career. He bludgeoned a woman to death in 1956, and then committed a double-homicide the same year. The year after that, he killed a few more people. He was suspected of the murders by police. They were able to demonstrate overwhelming evidence for this when banknotes Manuel had been using were found to have been taken from his victims. He was found guilty of all but one of the murder charges, and hanged in his cell in 1958. While he was only charged with 8 murders, he confessed to as many as 18. While his precise IQ score is not mentioned, it is reported as being high.
20) George Waterfield Russell Jr. - while his precise IQ score is not mentioned, it is noted as being in the gifted range.
21) Rodney Alcala - Alcala was a graduate of UCLA. He was arrested when the seriously injured body of an 8-year-old girl was found in his home. He fled to New York, where he became a student of NYU film school. Alcala pled guilty to child molestation for this crime, and was given an indeterminate sentence. He was released after 34 months.
None of Alcala's friends would have suspected him of these killings. He was charming, attractive, academically successful and intelligent, with a recorded IQ of 160.
This was only the beginning of Alcala's criminal career. It was not long after his release that he kidnapped and murdered a 12-year-old girl. Her remains were found around 40 miles from where she had last been seen, at which point only her bones were left.
Alcala had previously asked the girl and her friend if he could take a picture of them for a photography contest. His parole officer contacted authoritites and advised them to investigate Rodney Alcala after seeing his sketch on the news
He is perhaps most well-known for having been a contestant on "The Dating Game" in 1978. He was arrested a year later for the murder at 1979. The authorities eventually found a locker he owned, full of questionable photos of women. They also found photos of a woman at Huntington Beach, a place he had denied ever visiting, which threw his defense seriously into doubt.
He had told the women whom he had photographed that he was in a contest for a magazine he had worked for. This was 2 miles away from where one of his other victims had been kidnapped, and a couple of other teenage girls said that they had been approached by Alcala in the same area.
They also found a bag full of earrings. The mother of one of the victims recognized one of the pairs of earrings as having been often borrowed by her daughter. Alcala was convicted and given a death sentence, but his conviction was overturned. Nevertheless, he was tried and convicted again, and once again found guilty of murder. But this too was overturned. Fortunately, DNA technology quickly improved and he was found guilty of having murdered 3 other women thanks to DNA evidence, which proved that the earrings did indeed belong to his victim.
Apart from these more detailed descriptions, below is a brief list of other serial killers whose IQs were reported to have been notably above average.
22) Stephen Christopher Stanko - Serial killer with reported IQ of 143.
23) David Carpenter - Serial killer with reported IQ of 125.
24) David Christie - Serial killer with reported IQ of 128.
25) David Copeland - Serial killer with reported IQ of 125.
26) James Michael DeBardeleben - Serial killer with reported IQ of 127.
27) Harry Glatman - Serial killer with reported IQ of 130-140.
28) John Joubert - Serial killer with reported IQ of 124.
29) Randy Kraft - Serial killer with reported IQ of 129.
30) Timothy Wayne Krajcir - Serial killer with reported IQ of 125.
31) Patrick McCollough - Serial killer with reported IQ of 120.
32) Derek Ernest Percy - Serial killer with reported IQ of 122.
Russell, Sue. (2002). Lethal Intent. Pinnacle. p. 511. ISBN 978-0-7860-1518-4
Female serial killer 'cast a spell' over victims before 10-day spree of violence Joanna Dennehy, 31, stabbed in the heart and dumped their bodies in ditches in Cambridgeshire, trial of alleged accomplices hears
James Edgar
15 Jan 2014
A female serial killer who murdered three men in a 10-day spree of violence stuffed the body of her first victim into a wheelie bin before “casually” showing it to a teenage girl, a court heard. Joanna Dennehy, 31, has admitted stabbing the men through the heart and dumping their bodies in ditches, but the trial of two alleged accomplices has unearthed details of the intimidating “man woman”.
Jurors heard how Dennehy lured men to their deaths offering sex before “casting a spell” over Gary Stretch and Leslie Layton, who are accused of helping her cover up the “terrible truth”.
Her first victim was Lukasz Slaboszewski, 31, a heroin addict, Peter Wright, prosecuting, told Cambridge Crown Court. She coaxed him to a house with a series of text messages on March 19, last year, and he was never seen again. The court heard Dennehy, of Orton Goldhay, Peterborough, kept Mr Slaboszewski in a bin before transporting it to a remote ditch. "She even showed the body to a teenage girl quite casually as it lay in the wheelie bin," Mr Wright said.
On March 29 Dennehy murdered John Chapman, a 56-year-old Falklands veteran who lived at a bedsit in the same run-down property as her. High on drink and drugs he was "at the mercy" of Dennehy as she stabbed him to death. Afterwards Dennehy invited the two defendants to the property and Layton photographed the body on his mobile phone, the court heard. On the same day she murdered her lover Kevin Lee, 48, at the same property where Mr Slaboszewski died.
Mr Wright said that both Mr Slaboszewski and Mr Lee were also drawn by Dennehy's spell. "They paid for that with their lives," he added. The court heard how on April 2 Dennehy and Stretch looked for further victims in Hereford, where Dennehy selected “entire strangers” Robin Bereza and John Rogers. "Both men were left for dead," Mr Wright said.
Stretch, 47, of Riseholme, Orton Goldhay, Peterborough, denies three charges of preventing the lawful burial of all three men and two counts of attempted murder. Layton, 36, of Bifield, Orton Goldhay, denies perverting the course of justice and two counts of preventing the lawful burial of the bodies of Mr Chapman and Mr Lee. The trial continues.
Miranda Barbour says she's committed up to 100 murders in her short life The Satan worshiping teen said she adopted a murderous alter ego 'Super Miranda' when she killed and kept a favorite knife that she used to keep count of her victims
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