With crimes ranging from cannibalism to necrophilia to a "murder mansion," these serial killers left a bloody mark on U.S. history.
Karen Engstrom/Chicago Tribune/TNS via Getty ImagesInvestigators carrying the human remains found beneath the home of Chicago serial killer John Wayne Gacy in 1978.
Nothing strikes terror in a person quite like a serial killer. Just reading about these notorious murderers will make you want to lock your doors, even if it’s been years since they were imprisoned or executed. Indeed, these 11 American serial killers are a special kind of terrifying.
One was described by neighbors as a friendly and likable man. Another was a six-foot, nine-inch sociopath with a violent past and an IQ of 145.
These serial killers from the United States might have looked different on the surface, but underneath, they all shared a menacing hunger for bloodshed.
Jeffrey Dahmer, The Infamous American Serial Killer Known For His Cannibalism
Jeffrey Dahmer, a man whose crimes were shocking even among the ranks of other American serial killers, once acknowledged that the carnage he left behind is hard to comprehend, even for him.
Curt Borgwardt/Sygma via Getty ImagesJeffrey Lionel Dahmer, also known as the “Milwaukee Cannibal.”
“It’s hard for me to believe that a human being could have done what I’ve done,” Dahmer said. “But I know that I did it.”
Born to middle-class parents Joyce Flint and Lionel Dahmer in Milwaukee in 1960, Dahmer started to display troubling behavior as a small child. He was infatuated with the concept of death, he collected the carcasses of dead animals, and he was “oddly thrilled” by the sound of clacking animal bones.
Dahmer and his family moved to a suburb of Akron, Ohio, around the time he started high school. Socially ostracized, he soon turned to alcohol.
While he was in high school, Dahmer realized that he was gay. He also began to have alarming sexual fantasies where he would rape men. Just three weeks after graduating high school, Dahmer acted on these fantasies.
Wikimedia CommonsJeffrey Dahmer’s high school yearbook photo.
He picked up Steven Mark Hicks, an 18-year-old hitchhiker, and convinced him to come over to his house. When Hicks attempted to leave the home, Dahmer lost it: He brutally bludgeoned Hicks and strangled him. Chillingly, Dahmer also stripped Hicks naked and masturbated on his corpse.
Dahmer then took the body to the crawl space, removed the bones, smashed them into a fine powder, and dissolved the flesh with acid.
After the murder, Dahmer briefly served in the U.S. Army. During his service, he drugged and raped two soldiers, and upon his return to civilian life, he continued to drug and rape unsuspecting male victims.
His crimes turned deadly again in 1987 when he met 25-year-old Steven Tuomi at a bar. He claimed that he only intended to drug and rape Tuomi, but he woke up to find his corpse underneath his hotel room bed.
Later, Dahmer spent time in jail for child molestation. Upon his release, he met 24-year-old aspiring model Anthony Sears in a bar and took him home. Dahmer drugged, raped, and killed Sears. He preserved Sears’ head and genitals in jars, the demented trophies of his murder.
Dahmer eventually returned to Milwaukee, and the next two years were the most violent and disturbing of his life. He kept pieces of his victims as trophies, used their bodies for experiments, drilled holes into their skulls while they were still alive, and stored body parts in his fridge to eat later.
Dahmer’s downfall came on July 22, 1991, when he convinced 32-year-old Tracy Edwards to come home with him. Before long, Edwards began to fear for his life, especially when Dahmer threatened him with a knife and told him that he was going to cut out his heart and eat it.
Edwards briefly played along, but when Dahmer briefly left himself exposed, Edwards punched him in the face, escaped, and immediately led the police to Dahmer’s apartment. The authorities soon found one of the grisliest crime scenes in the history of American serial killers.
Dahmer admitted to all 17 of his murders and was sentenced to life in prison plus 70 years. He wouldn’t serve most of his sentence, however, because a fellow inmate named Christopher Scarver beat him to death with a metal bar in a prison bathroom on Nov. 28, 1994.
According to his murderer, Dahmer did not defend himself or fight back.
