The 5 Biggest American Serial Killers

1. Gary Leon Ridgway (48 Victims)

Gary Ridgeway, also known as the 'Green River Killer', killed numerous women during the 1980s and 1990s in Washington; he strangled his victims with rope, fishing line and sometimes any other thing he could find. He also subjected many of his victims to forms of torture, rape and even engaged in necrophilia. He was arrested on November 30th 2001, as he left the factory where he worked, on suspicion of the murders of 4 women which he had been linked to through DNA evidence.


Ridgeway pleaded guilty in November 2003 to 48 murders, all with female victims, although he stated later that he had actually killed more than 90 women. Almost all of his victims were prostitutes and almost all of them had occured in the early 1980's. As part of the plea bargain for admitting the murders he was spared the death penalty and was instead given life in prison with no chance of parole, this means that Ridgeway must die in prison.

 2. Belle Gunness (40 Victims)

Belle Gunness is the world's most prolific known female serial killer; she is known to have killed 40 people, the bodies were whom were found in the grounds of her property in Indiana. Her main motive was financial, initially life insurance payouts, but later attracting wealthy men to her farm through adverts in the dating pages of big city newspapers; before she killed them and took their money. She is known to have killed a number of potential suitors, boyfriends and two of her children; she is believed that have also killed both of her husbands and her three other children.

Belle was originally believed to have died in a fire at her home in 1908, but it is later believed that she set up the fire herself and had in fact fled to another state; leaving her three children to die in the fire. There were reports of Gunness being sighted up to 1931, where a women named Esther Carlson was arrested for poisoning a man for money. Two prominent people identified the now elderly Gunness from the resulting photos; however Carlson was to die whilst awaiting trial and her true identity was never established.

3. Ted Bundy (35 Victims)

Ted Bundy was active for five years between 1973 - 1978, during that period he twice escaped from county jails before his final apprehension in 1978. It took more than a decade of denials before Bundy confessed to some 30 alleged killings, although it is believed that he killed a total of 35; the span of his admitted killings was 1974 - 1978. His primary method of killing was to bludgeon his victims with a heavy object before strangling them to death. He was also a rapist and, like Gary Ridgeway, a necrophile. Ted was executed for his final murder in Florida in 1989. Bundy's murders spread over a number of American states including Washington, Idaho, Utah and Colorado

Bundy, like most serial killers, had a difficult childhood. He himself described how he has never understood how people interact socially, how they could become friends. He became obsessed with images of sex, death and violence, and books with descriptions of those acts combined. Like many Male serial killers, all of his murders were women and most had sadistic or sexual motives.

4. John Wayne Gacy, Jr. (33 Victims)

John Wayne Gacy, Jr. was a serial rapist and killer, convicted and executed for the rape and murder 33 boys and young men. Chillingly, he was in operation at the same time Ted Bundy, starting a year earlier in 1972 before his arrest in 1978. He is perhaps better known by his name 'The Killer Clown' because of his frequent block parties for children, where he would dress up as a clown complete with makeup; calling himself 'Pogo the Clown'. Again, like most serial killers, he had a very troubled upbringing with an alcoholic father who would beat him and call him a "sissy" repeatedly.

Gacy later managed a franchise of KFC in 1965, which his then parents-in-law had purchased. Despite doing a very good job of managing, he became embroiled in a secret life of drugs, pornography and using prostitutes. He was regularly cheating on his wife, with men, and opened a club for young boys where he would ply them with alcohol before making sexual advances. He served 18 months for sodomy, that was to be the last that the authorities heard of Gacy until.... 1978.

5. Dean Corll (27 Victims)

Dean Corll was active between 1970-1973, and is believed to be responsible for 27 murders, many of which were committed with two younger accomplices. The murders became known as the 'Houston Mass Murders' but only came to light after Corll was himself shot and killed by one of his accomplices. Corll is also known by many as 'The Candy Man', due to him being involved in his mothers candy store; he spent a lot of time with young boys as a result of his job as vice president of the growing business and would give out free candy. Aged 25, in 1963, Corll was drafted to the military where it is believed he first realised that he was homosexual. In 1968 his mother's third marriage failed and the candy store began to fail, Corll took a job as an electrician and his mother moved back to Colorado; she never saw him again.

All of Corll's victims were aged between 13 and 20, and most had been abducted from a deprived neighbourhood known as Houston Heights. Despite the huge rise in kids going missing, the local police simply believed that they were runaways; however following the dispute in which Corll was shot, his accomplice revealed that he had procured many victims for Corll in return for $200 each time. As a result of the information, the police searched the premise where most of the bodies were buried. In all they found 27 bodies, all of which had been strangled or shot; or both. The police were subsequently criticised for not searching for more bodies, since over 40 young boys had been reported missing from the local area.

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