The Crime Archives catalogues its serial killers by their number of proven hits. Some killers are suspected of much higher body counts. Others bragged about crimes they never committed. Check in the morgue for the latest entries. Because of its ever-increasing size, the Serial Killer Hit List has been broken into four sections according to number of hits.

Edmund Kemper III (10) Ed Kemper's mom thought her son was "a real weirdo." He had a near-genius IQ hidden within his lanky body and twisted mind. As a child he liked playing execution and once told his sister that if he were to love someone they would first have to be dead. As a teenager mom forced Ed to live in the basement so he wouldn't scare his sisters.

When he was fourteen he killed his grandparents to get back at his mother during her second honeymoon. He said he wanted to see how it felt to kill grandma. Consequently he was sent to Atascadero State Hospital for the criminally insane. There Eddie grew into a strapping six-foot-nine-inch hate machine.

In the early seventies Ed was released from the hospital and went to live with his overbearing mother. Mom had moved to Santa Cruz where she was working in the state college. In 1972, after a particular vicious argument with mom, Ed left the house knowing he was going to kill someone. That night, a hapless female hitchhiker was the first to fall prey to Ed's Oedipal mania.

Over the ensuing years, with the help of his campus pass obtained through his mother, Ed became known as the "Coed Killer" . He enjoyed decapitating his victims and having sex with their headless corpses. Sometimes he buried the heads of his victims outside his house facing his mother's bedroom window because she always wanted people "to look up to her." He took Polaroid's of his accomplishments and occasionally had one of his girls for dinner. Later he confessed that his acts of cannibalism were because, "I wanted them to be a part of me- and now they are." Once he visited his court-appointed psychiatrist with a head in the trunk of his car. Curiously, the psychiatrist thought he was doing great and he was really well adjusted.

At the time Ed was killing there were two other maniacs, John Lindley Frazier and Herbert Mullin, operating in proximity. Police were baffled by the amount of bodies appearing around their peaceful and bucolic surfer community. Kemper, who always wanted to be a cop, was fascinated with the investigation of his and the other crimes. He became friendly with the investigating officers and frequented their favorite haunts to grill them for grisly details.

Like Ed Gein, Kemper liked killing women who reminded him of his mother. On Easter Sunday 1973 he went after the root of his problem. Ed, the consumate mother's boy, beat her head in, then decapitated her and threw her vocal chords down the garbage disposal. When he turned it on, they chords came flying back out. Kemper later told police, "even when she was dead, she was still bitching at me. I couldn't get her to shut up!" Then he decided to use her head as a dart board. Not satisfied, he called mom's best friend, invited her over and killed her too. After, he drove to Colorado where he called his cop friends and confessed. At first they thought he was kidding. What they found at his mom's house made them change their mind. Ed now resides in the Vacaville Prison where he is their model serial killer prisoner with a heart of gold.

Gerald & Charlene Gallego (10) In 1955 Gerald's father was executed in Mississippi's gas chamber for killing two cops. As luck would have it, Gerald turned out meaner that his pop. When he was thirteen he was arrested for raping a six-year-old girl. Years later he was arrested for having sex with his teen-age daughter. After four or five marriages he settled down with Charlene Williams who he told her he was impotent. The only cure for it, he said, was frequent sex with virgins.

All in the name of love, Charlene helped him out with his misfortune by rounding up "sex-slaves" who he raped and murdered. Gerald and Charlene raped and slaughtered up to ten young women between 1978 and 1981. Some of the victims were shot to death, others were beaten to death with blunt objects, some were strangled, and at least one, who was 21 and four months pregnant, was buried alive.

After serving her 16-year sentence for her part in the abduction, rape and murder of 10 people in three states, Charlene was released from prison. Her lawyer says that she'll pursue "positive" goals in an undisclosed place. Gerald, who has one more plea before being fed the worms in Nevada, claims she did the killings.

Gallego, now 52, was convicted in 1984 of the killings of Karen Twiggs and Stacey Redican. The two young women disappeared from Sunrise Mall in Citrus Heights in April 1980. Their bodies were found three months later in a remote canyon. Gallego is suspected of having killed 10 people in his 26-month search for "the perfect sex slave." In 1984 Gallego was convicted and sentenced to death.

A competency hearing was set for March 22, 1999, to determine the mental state of Gerald Gallego, a Sacramento serial killer whose Nevada death sentence was overturned in 1997. Gallego, 52, has been undergoing a court-ordered evaluation by doctors since exhibiting bizarre behavior at a hearing in November that was supposed to be the first step toward a penalty-phase retrial of his 1984 murder convictions. That evaluation has been concluded, and attorneys from both sides conferred and settled on the starting date for the hearing that will decide if Gallego is competent to proceed.

During much of his competency hearing Gerald Gallego slept under a table in his cell and communicated with doctors through a food slot in the door. According to Dr. David V. Foster, such behavior, combined with evidence of organic brain dysfunction, is indicative of a mental state that renders him incapable of assisting counsel in a retrial of his penalty-phase proceedings. Foster, an Auburn psychiatrist hired to assist Gallego's appellate defense team in California in 1994, added that Gallego's behavior is a result of a "delusion that there's a herd of people from the dark side who are his enemy."

A federal appeals court ruled two years ago that his death sentence was invalid because the judge wrongly suggested to the jury that Gallego - who also was sentenced to death in California - might eventually be paroled if he was spared execution, thus the new competency hearings.

Claiming that Gallego suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder resulting from an extremely abusive childhood, and is afflicted by brain damage caused by head injuries sustained in his youth, the good doctor declared it would, "inhibit his ability to plan, problem-solve, comprehend and make judgments."

Bobby Joe Long (10) A distant cousin of Henry Lee Lucas, Bobby suffered from a hereditary disorder in which he had an extra "X" chromosome which made his glands produce abnormal amounts of estrogen. In other words, Bobby had tits. Adding to his confusion his mother slept with him until he was thirteen.

After suffering a head injury from a motorcycle accident, Bobby Joe turned into a lust machine. He masturbated five times a day in addition to the two daily sessions with his wife. Not satisfied he began stalking for new dates. From 1980 to 1983 Bobby was busy raping fifty women in the Miami/Fort Lauderdale area. In 1984, after moving back to the Tampa Bay area, he graduated to murder. His victims of choice were prostitutes whom he considered scum.

Not exactly the subtle type, Bobby dispatched his victims in his car, a bright red '78 Dodge Magnum. Traces of Bobby Joe's bright red nylon floor fiber was found on the shoes of his victims, which he would place in obscene positions for authorities to find. He also kept a detailed file with all the clippings of his crime spree. In November 17, 1984, he was arrested outside a Tampa movie theater. In early 1985 he received the death penalty. He now awaits his date with Ol' Sparky in Florida's Death Row.

David J. Carpenter (10) In 1961, at age thirty-three, David started demonstrating his psychotic tendencies when he attacked a woman with a hammer. After a stint in jail, a prison break, and another stint in jail, he came out a reformed man. In 1978 he relocated to San Francisco to work in a print shop. By August 1979 he was back to his old tricks. He started killing mostly women in hiking trails in Tamalpais State Park in San Francisco. He cruelly shot and stabbed his victims as they knelt and pled for their lives. By the end of 1980, after six murders by the "Trailside Killer," authorities linked him with the Zodiac Killer. By 1981 he had moved his hunting grounds to trails as far away as Santa Cruz. In May 1, 1981, police went to the print shop to investigate the whereabouts of Heather Scaggs, his ninth victim, who disappeared after he gave her a ride home from work. There they recognized him from the "Trailside Killer" police sketches and arrested him. Evidence linked him to the some of the murder weapons and the murder of another woman who he knew.

Henry Louis Wallace(9+) Confessed serial killer Henry Wallace was convicted of murdering nine women, all co-workers at Charlotte- area fast food restaurants, friends of his sister or friends of a former girlfriend. Uncharacteristically Wallace preyed on acquaintances, a very rare trait in serial killing.

Wallace was arrested in March 1994 after a burst of four slayings in three weeks which led police to suspect for the first time that there was a serial killer was at work. In custody he gave police taped statements detailing how he had murdered 10 women in Charlotte, most through strangulation after raping them in their homes. The serial murders occurred in a 22-month killing spree that ended with Wallace's arrest.

Charlotte police were criticized for not making an arrest sooner. Black residents were particularly critical, saying the police should have realized similarities in the murders -- the victims were young black women who had been strangled. Some were also stabbed. But police denied charges of racism, responding that Wallace, who is also black, did not fit the general profile of a serial killer.

Wallace was described by police as intelligent and charming, and with a heavy crack habit, apparently was able to talk his way in. Before he left some of the murder scenes, Wallace sometimes wiped off fingerprints and washed his victims. In one case, he poured rum on one victim's body and set fire to her apartment to obscure the cause of death.

Wallace told police he returned to the apartment of his final victim, Debra Slaughter, to smoke crack after he had strangled her and stabbed her 38 times. Then he put on her Chicago White Sox jacket, grabbed a beer from her refrigerator and left.

"It was like an out-of-body experience," he said of one slaying. "It was like I didn't want to, but something or somebody was taking over my body, and I couldn't even stop when I tried to stop." "If he elected to become a serial killer, he was going about it in the wrong way," said Robert Ressler, one of the "Mr. Wallace always seemed to take one step forward and two steps back," Ressler testified. "He would take items and put them in the stove to destroy them by burning them and then forget to turn the stove on."

On June 5, 1998, Henry Louis Wallace, was married to a former prison nurse, Rebecca Torrijas, in a ceremony next to the execution chamber where he has been sentenced to die. Rebecca wore a pale green dress covered with pink flowers and a pearl necklace. Wallace looked dashing in his red prison jumpsuit and black tennis shoes. Wallace's court-appointed attorney, Mecklenburg County public defender Isabel Day, served as an official witness and photographer. Also attending was the manager of the death-row unit at the prison.

The newlyweds were allowed to talk with one another for about 20 minutes in the room where they were married. They were reunited a few minutes later in another area, where they were separated by plastic glass and bars, and talked for about an hour.

Calvin Jackson (9+) Calvin did not like to stray away from home. That's why he did most of his killings in the Park Plaza Hotel in Manhattan where he lived. He heard voices telling him to kill old people and was happy to comply. He enjoyed raping his victims before and after death. He was arrested while he was carrying a stolen TV down a fire escape. He was also suspected, although never convicted, of five additional killings in Buffalo.

Ali Reza Khoshruy Kuran Kordiyeh (9) On August 12, 1997, Ali Reza Khoshruy Kuran Kordiyeh -- known as the "Teheran Vampire" -- was hanged from a yellow construction crane near the scene of his crimes before a cheering crowd of 20,000 onlookers who chanting "Allahu Akbar" (God is greatest). Gholom, 28, was found guilty of kidnapping, raping and murdering at least 9 women who he picked up at night while impersonating a taxi driver. To hide his crime he reportedly poured gas on several of his victims and set them on fire. Some of the bodies were not destroyed completely and police found up to 30 stab wounds on them.

Before hanging the Vampire received 214 lashes from relatives of his victims. As part of the punishment he was also flogged by prison authorities. His last words as he was hoisted up to the crane were: "I borrowed money from no one and I owe none to anyone. I ask God for forgiveness for what I did."

Kordiyeh was first arrested in 1993 for rape and kidnapping, but managed to escape during a transport to court. He was picked up again for suspicious behavior at a mall, and was later identified through a police sketch provided by two women who had escaped him. Faced with evidence, including blood stains on his car, Kordiyeh confessed. His trial became a was broadcast live to fascinated Iranians by state-run television, but cameras were barred from the hanging. However, amateur video footage of the execution did make it to western news broadcasts.

The Vampire committed his bloody rampage between February and June of 1997. Authorities fear that the publicity generated by Gholom's reign of terror could provoke copy-cat killings. Already another taxi driver was arrested after attempting to assault a woman passenger. According to press reports, he boasted: "I'm going to be the next Teheran Vampire."

Peter Kurten (9) Pete was born in 1883 in Germany. A product of a brutally unhappy childhood, Peter got his kicks by strangling squirrels and beating off dogs. When he was nine he helped two boys drown in a boating accident. As a teen-age he graduated to fucking sheep and goats and knifing them to achieve orgasm.

From 1905 to 1921 Pete was constantly in jail. Once he was out he was free to kill with impunity. Pete earned the moniker "The Vampire of Dusseldorf" because he enjoyed drinking the blood of his victims. He also killed animals when he was feeling thirsty. On occasion he delighted in setting fires to abandoned buildings hoping to roast whatever transients might be sleeping inside.

Like most sexual sadists, Peter also lived a seemingly "normal" life. His wife never imagined such a mild mannered man could be responsible for such ruthless killings. When confessed to the police his wife, who was sitting next to him, fainted. Peter proceeded to give police a detailed recounting of 77 criminal acts over ten years. While in jail Peter had many orgasm just thinking about his crimes. He also enjoyed returning to his crime scenes where he would instantly cum' in his pants. His last wish was "to hear his own blood filling the sack," during his decapitation. His wish came true on July 2, 1931.

Ian Brady & Myra Hindley (9) Ian and Myra met while working for a chemical company in Hyde, Greater Manchester, England. She thought he was quite an intellectual as he sat in the lunch room reading Mein Kampf in German. As their love blossomed they became more obsessed with Nazi paraphernalia, pornography and sadism. At first they enjoyed shooting pictures of themselves in the buff and in S & M drag. They thought they could crack the local porn market with their pictures but failed. Soon they proved to be more successful in child abduction and murder.

Most of their victims were children whom they sexually molested before killing. These sadist lovebirds liked to document their murderous deeds. They kept an extensive collection of photographs of their victims as well as a recording of the screams of one girl's torturous end. In 1966 they were arrested after Ian bragged about his killings to Myra's brother-in-law. When the brother-in-law doubted his ability to kill, Ian smoked a young man right in front of him. The brother-in-law did not react appropriately. Instead of showing admiration, he went to the cops. Twenty years after their arrest, Ian confessed to four new murders the police had never linked to them.

In December 1995, Hindley, who is in the same jail in northern England as fellow serial killer Rosemary West, gave her first public account of her crime spree, admitting she had been wicked and corrupt but claiming she was now a changed woman. Hindley described herself as a political prisoner who was being used as a scapegoat by politicians and the media. The formerly montruous killer said: "The majority of people don't want to accept that people like myself can change, They prefer to keep me frozen in time together with that awful mugshot so that their attitudes, beliefs and perceptions can remain intact." On February, 1997, her lawyers made a plea to win her release. However, a London Superior Court decreed that Myra will spend the rest of her life behind bars with no possibility of parole.

On May 21 the High Court announced a judicial review of their 1990 decision of imposing a "whole-life" sentence on the aging neo-Nazi convicted killer. Hindley's lawyers will argue that the decision did not reflect the views of the judge in the case, Mr. Justice Fenton, who recommended only that she serve "a very long time." According to her lawyers the "whole-life" sentence represented an "irrational leap" from the 30-year period fixed by the Home Office in 1985.

On November 21 supporters of Myra called for a review of sentencing procedures after Jack Straw reaffirmed the decision of his predecessor, Michael Howard, of never releasing Myra from prison. The ruling came under immediate attack from penal reformers and civil liberties campaigners.

Lord Longford, Britain's leading prison reformer, expressed "total disgust and contempt" and described her as a "good woman". He told BBC Radio 4's Today show: "I am very sorry indeed that a high-minded man, a Christian socialist like Jack Straw should have taken that decision. Of course it's all as a result of the horrifying pressure exerted by the tabloids." Lord Longford said that Hindley had been a good young woman "until she began to work under a very gifted, but mentally disturbed man, Ian Brady. She was an infatuated accomplice 31 years ago".

On October 7, 1998 Myra concluded a hearing at the Court of Appeals trying to overrule her "whole-life tarriff." In her new attempt at overturning her life sentence and win the right to a parole hearing, Hindley claimed that she can prove that she took part in the Moors murders only because Brady abused her, and threatened to kill her mother, grandmother and younger sister.

Freedom seeking Myra alleges that trigger-happy Ian bit, strangled, whipped, drugged and even blackmailed her into taking part in the murders. He lawyers claim that new material that will be presented to court includes photographs taken by Brady showing her naked with bruises and injuries caused by bites, whips and canes. Then again, they did have a sado-masochistic relationship, and bruises and bite marks are something that goes with the territory.

Brady, 60, now a patient at Ashworth Special Hospital in Merseyside, responded saying that "33 years of duplicity" had driven "her into the realms of psychotic delusion and absurdity". He also claimed that the bruises were faked using lipstick in their attempt at selling pornographic pictures. The cooperative type, Brady has said he would release "sick" letters to the highest bidder that she wrote to him up to six years after they were convicted. Any payment, he added, should go to victims' families.

This latest court action represents the third strategy Hindley has adopted since conviction. At first she stayed silent, and then later revealed evidence of other murders in a fruitless bid to convince the public that she had reformed. Now she is claiming that she took part in the crimes unwillingly.

Brady has condemning Hindley's attempt to blame him for the killings and released a six-page letter he sent to the Home Secretary. Brady wrote: "Hindley, in her usual Barbara Cartland prose, has created a Victorian melodrama in which she portrays herself as being forced to murder serially, by being drugged, blackmailed, whipped, raped, battered, having her family threatened with slaughter, bitten, strangled etc, etc.

"At first I was staggered and appalled, then as the catalogue of feverish crimes mounted to stultification level, I slowly realised that desperation had finally driven her over the top. It appears that the neurosis bred by her own pathological machinations has developed into psychosis. She appears to be suffering from a histrionic personality disorder, adopting manipulative attention seeking behaviour . . . an obsessive-compulsive personality disorder, concealing a strong tendency towards rebellion and acting on impulse."

On September 21, 2001, Brady was given permission to publish his book on serial killers by the hospital for the criminally insane where his is serving his sentence. On September 11, the hospital was granted a court order to obtain a copy of the manuscript and block its publication. After determining that the book, "The Gates of Janus," contained no references to the hospital or Brady's own crimes, a lawyer representing the hospital announced that they were not opposed to the publication of the book.

On November 15 , 2002, Myra -- Britain's most reviled killer -- died of bronchial pneumonia due to problems with her heart. Home Office pathologist Dr Michael Heath told the hearing the 60-year-old suffered from high blood pressure and poor blood supply to the heart, resulting in blocked coronary arteries. At the time of her death, Myra was Britain's longest serving woman prisoner.

Not the most loved person in the UK, the tabloid press held her in contempt even after death -- "The Final Injustice: She Died Peacefully," read the front page headline of the Daily Mail. Though some people lobbied for her release after serving 36 years, most remain horrified about her claims of "having paid her debt to society." Ironically, by the time her smoked-ravaged lungs gave out, she was on the threshhold of being released.

Melvin David Rees (9) Rees was a Benzedrine-popping, jazz saxophonist with a voracious appetite for sex and death. In the late fifties he terrorized the roads between Maryland and Virginia. A vicious sex-slayer, he also had a taste for necrophilia. He kept several cabins where he collected pornography and autopsy photos. He also wrote journals detailing his acts of murder and other lurid tales of real and imaginary sadism. In 1961 the state of Virginia executed him.

Francisco de Assis Pereira (8+) Through his lawyer Brazilian serial killer Francisco de Assis Pereira, confessed he is Sao Paolo's feared Park Maniac. "My client is guilty. My client is sick," lawyer Maria Elisa Munhol told reporters in comments broadcast by Globo Network television. This sweet-talking, roller-blader is believed to have charmed his way to mirdering nine young women and burying them in a wooded park in Sao Paolo. Pereira, 30, told investigators he was about to start eating his victims had his six-month killing spree not been uncovered.

Targeting women between the ages of 18 and 24, he strolled through the city's vast Parque do Estado, passing himself off as a fashion photographer. Pereira flattered his victims, telling them they had a bright future in modelling and drew them into secluded areas of the park for a "photo shoot." There, he is said to have strangled the women with shoelaces or scarves after sexually abusing them.

Pereira informally confessed to his lawyer and two others on the night of August 7, 1998. The next day he told police he was responsible for the eight bodies found in Sao Paolo's State Park. He also confessed to have killed Isadora Fraenkel and led police to her remains, a partly covered skeleton that he had burned with gasoline three days after the murder. He also tried to locate a tenth body, of a 15-year old girl, but failed. He testified about each killing in detail, but said he may have lost the actual count of his victims.

After his arrest the former motorcycle courier was nearly lynched by a mob of 200 people as police escorted him to a maximum security prison. Authorities say Pereira will be held in an isolated cell, saying he would almost certainly be killed if jailed with other prisoners. Pereira was caught on August 4 in Itaqui, state of Rio Grande do Sul, near the Argentine border after a frantic 23-day manhunt. He initially proclaimed his innocence, saying that he was unaware of that he was wanted by police and was heading to a skating competition, but later confessed to journalists and took police to the bodies, all of which were buried in the park. Nine women who escaped the killer's clutches helped police identify him.

On December 18, 2000, inmates at the Taubate House of Custody and Psychiatric Treatment tried to kill Pereira during a prison riot. Four inmates died in the disturbance. Authorities moved Pereira to another psychiatric facility to spare his life.

Andrew Urdiales (8+) A Chicago security guard, Andrew admitted to killing three women from Illinois and Indiana, and five others in Southern California. Urdiales, 32, was charged with the murder of two prostitutes whose nude bodies were found floating in Chicago's Wolf Lake. Also, the Livingston County Sheriff's Department said it was preparing charges against Urdiales in the death of a Hammond, Indiana prostitute whose body was found in the Vermilion River near Pontiac, about 90 miles southwest of Chicago.

Urdiales, who worked as a security guard -- one of the more coveted job in the serial killing community -- at a downtown Chicago Eddie Baurer store, allegedly frequented the Chicago suburb of Hammond, Indiana, a known gathering spot for local prostitutes. Once his victims got into his car, he would bound their hands and feet with duct tape and take them to an isolate spot where he would rape and kill them. Both victims discovered in Wolf Lake were stabbed repeatedly and shot in the mouth. "He is the killer," said Chicago Police Commander Nathan Gibson. "He would kill them after having sex with them."

In 1996 Urdiales came to the attention of Chicago authorities when he was arrested on a weapons violation involving a .38-caliber gun. He was subsequently released, but when he was arrested again on April 23, 1997, police linked him to two of the killings through his .38-caliber gun. He was arrested after coaxing a prostitute into his car in Hammond, Indiana, and trying to handcuff her. The panicked woman scuffled with him and screamed for help and a nearby police officer came to her help.

A former Marine, Urdiales was stationed in California at Camp Pendleton and Twentynine Palms from 1984 to 1991. While serving the country authorities believe he killed at least five women and probably more. Palm Springs police found a gun and knife in a storage locker registered to Urdiales' name which they are checking for links to other killings.

Orange County Sheriff Brad Gates said the California cases include the 1986 assault of Robbin Brandley, a 23-year-old student who was stabbed to death in dimly lit parking lot at Saddleback Community College in Mission Viejo. Law enforcement in Palm Springs that confirmed the former radio operator admitted to killing three women in and around their desert community. He is considered the prime suspect in the 1989 killing of Tammy Lynn Erwin, a 18-year-old transient whose bullet-riddled body was found in a vacant lot, and the March, 1995 killing of 32 year-old Denise Maney. His fifth Californian murder is another woman in San Diego.

Many of his acquaintances said Urdiales used to be a normal man but when he came back from the Marines, "he was different." Gary Zabala, an old friend said, "I think the Marines changed his life." During the police interviews in Chicago, veteran investigators were shocked by how calmly and unemotionally Urdiales described his decade-long rampage. "This is the worst interview I've ever had," said Palm Springs Police Detective John Booth. "He just sat there and said things like, 'Then I blew her head off' like it was no big deal."

Christopher Wilder (8+) Australian born Chris Wilder was a big-spending, jet-setting, race-car driving, bon vivant who was always searching for beautiful women to rape and kill. Using the old I'm-a-photographer-in-search-of-models trick he bagged at least eight victims in a bi-continental rape and murder spree. He sometimes enjoyed practicing a type of homemade electroshock therapy on his victims. Once he glued one of his victims eyes shut.

In the spring of 1984 he kidnapped Tina Marie Risico from a Torrance, California, mall and, after raping her repeatedly, forced her to assist him with his killings. As they drove eastward Wilder enjoyed watching the news reports about his crime spree. When they reached Boston he dropped Tina Marie at the airport and sent her back home to California. On April 13 he was spotted by a passing state trooper and accidentally shot himself dead while struggling for his gun.

Dorothea Puente (8+) Dorothea operated a boarding house in Sacramento, California where she offered quality lodgings for elderly people on fixed incomes. She also offered poison and a bed of flowers to bury their corpses in. As she offed her boarders she kept cashing their social security checks.

In 1988, after too many of her boarders disappeared, cops showed up with shovels and unearthed seven corpses from her garden. Curiously, Dorothea's boarding house was six blocks away from the home of Morris Solomon where previously six bodies had been found. Another body discovered in the Sacramento River in 1986 was added to her hit list. It's believed that she might have killed up to twenty-five others. She was arrested in Los Angeles on November 17, 1988 after she inquired about an acquaintance's disability check and offered to fix him a nice Thanksgiving dinner with all the trimmings.

Gary & Thaddeus Lewingdon (8+) Gary Lewingdon and his brother, Thaddeus, were known as the ".22-caliber killers" for the bullets they used to kill 10 people in robberies and home invasions around Columbus, Ohio, between February and December 1978. The killingswere characterized by their sheer brutality and multiple gunshots at close range to their heads. Thaddeus died of cancer in prison in 1989. Gary, on the other hand, will be eligible for parole in December 1998.

The killers were caught on December 9, when one tried to buy gifts with a murdered man's credit card. Once in custody, Gary implicated his brother. Although they were believed to be responsible for ten killings, Thaddeus was convicted of six and his older brother was convicted of eight. Curiously, before before being caught, police failed to react when Gary's wife told them that Thaddeus was the ".22-caliber killer."

Gregory Breeden (8+) Greg, believed to have killed at least 8 prostitutes in and around Kansas City, has only been charged with two murders. Chatty Greg confessed one of the killings to a cell mate in prison. He is currently being tried in Missouri for two murders. Conveniently Breeden is already serving a 14-year sentence for writing bad checks.

There have been about 77 prostitutes reported missing in and around Kansas City since the late '70's. Six suspected victims of Greg, all with ties to drugs and the Independence Avenue trade, were found in the river between 1982 and 1994, some without their legs. Furthermore, several torsos and other surgically removed body parts have turned up in area rivers suggesting the existence of other serial killers in the area or a rising body count for busy Greg.

Russell Ellwood (8+) A former cab driver, Russell Ellwood was arrested on March 4, 1998, for two of 25 similar slayings in the New Orleans area. From 1991 to 1996 New Orleans police kept finding nude bodies in swamp lands around their city. Most were African-American, female, and prostitutes; some were men and some transsexuals. Some had been strangled, others apparently killed by drug overdoses. Ellwood is suspected in eight of these killings. Four more suspects -- including Victor Gant -- remain under investigation in connection with the remaining murders.

An Ohio native, Ellwood served time in Florida and Ohio on drug charges and probation violations. A long-time suspect, Ellwood agreed in January to return to Louisiana in an effort to clear his name and help solve the cases. Once he enterd the state, he was jailed on outstanding traffic charges.

Cheryl Lewis, one of the women Ellwood is charged with killing, drowned while under the influence of cocaine and amphetamines. Her body was found Feb. 20, 1993, in a swamp in Hahnville, just west of New Orleans. A day later and just one-fifth of a mile away, the other woman, Delores Mack, was found strangled and suffocated. Cocaine was in her blood too. A year later, Ellwood was found in the area in the middle of the night. He told an officer he was changing his car's oil and didn't want the Department of Environmental Quality to catch him.

On October 1997, Ellwood told a fellow jail inmate in Florida that he liked sex with men and women who were drugged into insensibility. Te convict told authorities that Ellwood boasted that "he enjoyed the fun of having sex with people who were not in control of their bodies... He said if they were high on cocaine or heroin, the heroin would put them in a state of mind as if they were paralyzed and he could take advantage."

Marie Noe (8) On June 28, 1999, Marie Noe, pleaded guilty in a Philadelphia court to smothering eight of her young children decades ago. Noe, who is 70-years-old, was once featured in articles as the unluckiest mother in the world. She admitted killing her children between 1949 and 1968 and was sentenced to 20 years' probation, the first five of which must be served under home confinement. She also must undergo mental health treatment sessions with a psychiatrist to determine the cause of her repeated infanticide.

With no evidence to show otherwise, doctors and investigators had reluctantly attributed the deaths of eight children -- none of whom lived longer than 14 months -- to sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS). Before her arrest, Noe had confessed in March to police that she suffocated four of the infants and said she did not remember the other four deaths. During a meeting with a state psychiatrist in November, she confessed to killing the other four children.

Kendall Francois (8) On September 3, 1998, authorities in white jumpsuits and surgical-style face masks started pulling bodies from the Poughkeepsie, New York, family home of 27-year-old Kendall Francois.

By the time they were done investigators found the bodies of eight women in various states of decay tucked away in the attic, basement and crawl spaces of the home the bulging serial killer shared with his mother, father and younger sister. Francois -- who is black -- has been linked to the deaths of at least eight women who had disappeared from the same gritty Poughkeepsie neighborhood since October 1996. All the missing women had histories of prostitution and drug use.

So far, the other family members are not considered suspects and did not realize Kendall was stashing bodies in the house. "It's not the cleanest house in the world," a police spokesperson said explaining how the family could have been unaware of their home -- which is in a middle-class neighborhood a block away from Vassar College -- was doubling as a slaughterhouse. Though his parents and the letter carrier delivering mail to the house often commented about the funky smell, Kendall told them it was a dead animal that got stuck in a wall.

In February, Francois -- a college dropout who had been unhemployed since January 1997 -- was jailed for 15 days on a misdemeanor charge of sexual misconduct and assault involving a Poughkeepsie prostitute. In the usual post-arrest serial killer media blitz, neighbors said Francois, a former school helper known to the children as "Stinky", was "mild-mannered" and "friendly." Others said he was an obese, unemployed slob who smelled bad and reminded them of the cartoon character "Fat Albert." His pants were undone, his belly hung out and "stuff" caked the outside of his lips.

As of this writing Francois has only been charged with one count of second-degree murder in the strangulation of Catina Newmaster, 25, who was last seen August 26.

William Darrell Lindsey (8) In April, 1997, after being charged with killing a prostitute in Asheville, North Carolina, Lindsey, a former construction worker, has become the main suspect in the slayings of seven Florida women since 1983. Authorities pieced together his murderous trail after several former residents of the St. Agustine area now living in North Carolina sent news clippings about Lindsey's arrest to the sheriff in Florida.

Investigators thought some of the bludgeoning deaths and disappearances were related, but it wasn't until Lindsey, 61, decided to talk to visiting Florida detectives that the scope of the case came out. Although Lindsey did not confess, he expressed remorse and knew enough about each murder to be a suspect. "We've been able to connect Mr. Lindsey with each of these women and have determined he was responsible for their murders," St. Johns County Sheriff Neil Perry said.

All seven victims were from the St. Augustine area. Some of the women were prostitutes and some were drug users, he said. The bodies of two of the seven remain missing. Since Lindsey was brought to Florida investigators have started searching two ponds and a large pit outside of St. Augustine where bodies were believed to be dumped.

Vladimir Mukhankin (8) In January, 1997, Vladimir Mukhankin, 36, pleaded guilty to murdering eight women in Rostov-a-Don, the former stomping grounds of Andrei Chikatilo, Russia's most infamous serial killer. Vladimir was sentenced to death for his murderous rampage.

Reginald Christie (8) Reggie's sexual inadequacies made him a very angry man. In the 1940s and 1950s this British maniac killed at least five prostitutes, his wife, another woman and her baby daughter. He also kept a collection of clipped pubic hairs, some of which did not match any of his known victims. He liked to render his victims unconscious and then strangle and fuck them simultaneously. He enjoyed "a quiet, peaceful thrill" when he was killing. Strangely the husband of one of the women he killed confessed to the murder but then recanted and accused Christie. Not knowing who to believe, the police hanged the confessor. When Christie moved out of his flat, the new tenant found three corpses hidden in the cupboard, Christie's dead wife under the floorboards and two more bodies buried in the garden. He was hanged in 1953.

Keith Jesperson (8) An interstate trucker known as the Happy Face Killer is serving three life terms in Oregon for three killings. Keith, bothered by his guilty conscience, has confessed to and then recanted at least 160 slayings across the United States. He was dubbed the "Happy Face Killer" by authorities after he started sending neatly printed letters to the media with happy faces drawn at the top in which he boasted of his deeds.

After leading police to the purse of one of his presumed victims, authorities realized that they had wrongfully convicted two people for the killing. In 1990, Laverne Pavlinac told police she held a rope around Taunja Bennett's neck while her boyfriend John Sosnovske raped and killed her. She then recanted and said that she invented the story to get out of their abusive 10-year relationship. Nevertheless they were convicted and jailed for more than four years. On November 27, 1995, they were released from prison by an Oregon judge. Jesperson, the real killer, cried out of happiness for their acquittal.

On June 3, 1998 Jesperson, now 42, in a plea bargain that allowed him to avoid the death penalty, admitted to the 1995 strangulation of hitchhiker Angela Subrize, 21, at a truck stop in Cheyenne, Wyoming. Jesperson, had been extradited from Oregon to Wyoming in anticipation of a death penalty case. Jesperson, from his jail cell, taunted prosecutors in several states, saying his life sentences in the Pacific Northwest would keep him locked away and out of their reach. An avid media manipulator in 1997 he had his web site (maintained by death-groupie Sondra London) on AOL closed after Wyoming's governor complained about his writings in it.

In 1997 Sondra London posted on the Internet a letter from Danny Rolling expressing his relationship with his Death Row neighbor the Christian fundamentalist Paul Hill who was sentenced to death for killing an abortion clinic doctor and a bystander.

At first I found Paul Hill to be a nice guy. Well, I've gotten to know him a lot better since he moved into the cell next to mine, and my prior opinion of him no longer stands.

IMO Paul Hill is the most self-righteous, holier-than-thou asshole I have ever met. I've cussed him out more times than I can recall. It's not his anti-abortion stance in itself that ticks me off. It's his "Everybody on Death Row deserves to die -- but him."

He gunned down two people in cold blood. Yet he refuses to accept reponsibility for his actions. I've gotten into deep conversations with him about the Bible, and his need to ask God for forgiveness for killing.

Well! Mr. Sanctimonious emphatically stated, "Oh! I don't need to ask for forgiveness. What I did was righteous and good."

I rebuked him, "Paul! Do you actually think God needs you or anyone else to take a soul from this earth? God didn't tell you to kill those people. That was Paul's doing." I mean, if God Almighty wants someone dead, all he has to do is stop their heart, give 'em a stroke, cause the ground to open up, or nudge a tornado over their house.

Oh... but when he went on about how he was all for the death penalty and would be happy to throw the switch himself... WHOA! I got in his face and cussed him out like he was a red-headed step-child. It's no secret. Everybody on the Row has heard me verbally express my open hatred of him. I won't say anything about someone -- anyone -- unless I'm willing to say it to the individual's face. I CAN NOT STAND PAUL HILL, and that's that.

Alton Coleman & Debra Brown (8) Alton Coleman, a black man, thought other blacks were forcing him to kill members of his race, and he was happy to comply. He was diagnosed by a prison psychiatrist as having pansexual propensities, that is, willingness "to have intercourse with any object, women, men, children, whatever." In the summer of 1984, he teamed up with twenty-one year old Debra Brown for a brutal 54-day rampage across the Midwest.

The two went on a six-state spree of murders, rapes and kidnappings in which every day they committed a new act of violence. By the time of their arrests, they left eight dead in their wake. Coleman was sentenced to death for the July 13, 1984, beating 44-year-old Marlene Walters to death in her Norwood, Ohio, home. Walters, 44, had just served lemonade to Coleman and Brown when she was attacked. He and Brown had said they wanted to buy the Walters camper. Coleman and Brown also were sentenced to die for the torture and slaying of Tonnie Storey, 15, of Cincinnati two days before the Walters attack.

In Illinois, Coleman received the death penalty for strangling Vernita Wheat, 9, whose body was found in his hometown of Waukegan, Ill. In Indiana, Coleman and Brown were sentenced to death for stomping and strangling 7-year-old Tamika Turks of Gary, Indiana. Tamika's 9-year-old aunt was also attacked but survived.

Debra Brown, who was 21 at the time of the rampage, was sent to Ohio Reformatory for Women in Marysville, and sentenced to death for the Tonnie Storey murder. In 1991 the sentence was commuted to life without parole. Currently she is trying to overturn her second death sentence in Indiana, where she is the only female among 51 people under active death sentences. As of this writing, Indiana but that state has not sought her extradition.

Coleman was the third of five children of a Waukegan prostitute and was raised by his maternal grandmother. He was nicknamed "Pissy" by playmates because he was a bedwetter. In court his lawyer claimed he was abused as a child and his brain was affected by his mother use of drugs and alcohol while pregnant. Police and prosecutors, though, saw Coleman as a charismatic man who charmed his way into his victims' lives.

On April 26, 2002, Coleman was put to death by lethal injection at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility. The Waukegan, Illinois, native received an injection of sodium thiopental, which sent him into deep sleep, pancuronium bromide to relax his muscles, followed by a final dose of potassium chloride to stop his heart. He was declared dead at 10:13 a.m. Because of the number of victims, Ohio prison officials decided to broadcast an execution via closed circuit to another prison room to accommodate additional witnesses.

Coleman spent his last hours watching religious tapes of Dallas-based evangelist T.D. Jakes and listening to music after a special meal of filet mignon and fried chicken breasts. When asked if he had a final statement, he began to recite the 23rd Psalm, saying, "The Lord is my shepard, I shall not want. He leadeth me to green pastures." As he repeated it, the warden pulled the microphone away from him and Coleman could be seen speaking until he lost consciousness.

Jean-Baptiste Troppmann (8) Born in Alsace in 1848, Jean-Baptiste's lethality led him to the guillotine at the tender age of 22. In 1869 he hooked up with Jean Kinck with who he planned to set up a counterfeiting operation. However, Jean-Baptiste had a different get rich quick scheme in mind. As the two travelled to Herrenfluch to survey a site for their money printing plant, Troppman fed his partner a lethal dose of prussic acid mixed in wine.

Once Mr. Kinck was out of the way, Jean-Baptiste wired to his wife asking her for money. Mrs. Kinck, believing Jean-baptiste was acting in behalf of her husband, sent him a check allong with her. Unable to cash the money, he arranged a meeting with the wife in Paris and, having no more use for the boy, hacked him into to pieces.

On September 1869, Hortense Kinck met Troppman in Paris and gave him 55,000 francs thinking that they were for her husband. Once he had the money in his pocket he butchered Mrs. Kinck and her remaining five children in a remote spot near the Pantin Common.

The next day the bloodbath was uncovered by a workman who uncovered the mutilated remains of Hortense and her children. More charges were added against Troppman once the bodies of Gustave and Jean Kinck were unearthed. Jean-Baptiste was sentenced to death for the eight killings and , on January 19, 1870 -- at the tender age of 22 -- he was guillotined.

John Norman Collins (7+) Believed to have killed 7 women from 1967 to 1969, John Norman Collins was only convicted of one murder and sentenced to life. As of yet he has not confessed to any other deaths. The "Michigan Murders," as they were called, were very brutal and occurred around Ypsilanti and Ann Arbor area. John is suspected of having murdered more women from Michigan to California during a cross-country trek in a stolen camper.

Gustavo Adolfo (7+) This 17-year-old boy in El Salvador has been charged with 17 counts of murder. ( The judge found insufficient evidence on 10 of the counts. On April, 1999, the judge convicted Gustavo Adolfo, whose full name cannot be published under Salvadoran law because he is a minor, of killing seven people and sentenced him to seven years in prison -- the maximum sentence for a minor for any crime. With good behavior, he could be released in half that.

Gustavo Adolfo says he's innocent, and that he is being persecuted because of fashion, not evidence. "My hands haven't killed," he said at a news conference this month. "The judge doubted me because of my tattoos, my clothes. Nobody believes in me."

Gustavo Adolfo, whom relatives call "Tavo," grew up in a poor neighborhood of San Miguel, 85 miles east of El Salvador's capital. When he was 10, his mother took him out of school because other kids were beating him up daily. By the time he was 13, he says, he entered the world of gangs, many of which are led by U.S. gangsters deported to El Salvador.

His first murder, they say -- and one of those for which he was convicted -- was of a young woman he was dating. He was 14, and she had turned down his sexual advances. According to the prosecutors, Gustavo Adolfo kidnapped her and took her to a hideout, where he raped her, cut off her breasts and threw her -- still barely alive -- into a well, where he left her to die. Prosecutors would not provide details of the six other killings, except to say that several involved rapes.

About 20 families fled the neighborhood where he grew up this month when Gustavo Adolfo, along with seven other minors in a temporary prison, clubbed a guard and made a quick getaway. "I left out of fear and because they warned me that the gang would take away one of my daughters," said one neighbor, who didn't give her name for fear of reprisal.

Dale R. Anderson (7+) According to ex-FBI wiz Robert Ressler, "sexual psychopath" Dale R. Anderson, imprisoned for one of the most brutal slayings in Belleville history, likely killed newspaper intern Audrey Cardenas and four other women. Describing Anderson as a "model" serial killer, Ressler said: "There has been no one that I've seen as of late who fits the pattern of a serial killer as strongly as he does."

If Ressler is right about Anderson, that means two men have spent a total of 30 years behind bars for murders they didn't commit. Anderson, who denies killing anyone, was convicted of the 1989 murders of a mother and her young son near Belleville.

The other suspected victims are: Elizabeth K. West, a 14-year-old freshman at Belleville Township High School West whose strangled body was found in a creek between Belleville and Millstadt on May 5, 1978. She vanished a block from her home as she was returning from performing in her high school play. Ruth Ann Jany, 21, whose body was found in July 1979 near a creek five miles south of where West's body was discovered. She disappeared a year earlier after stopping at an automatic teller machine in downtown Belleville. Police believe she was strangled. A still unidentified woman thought to be 18 to 23 years old, strangled and hidden in a cornfield near Summerfield in St. Clair County in September 1986. Kristina Povolish, 19, whose strangled body was discovered in a weed-covered ditch in July 1987 just southwest of Belleville. Audrey Cardenas, 24, whose badly decomposed body was found in an overgrown creek on the campus of Belleville Township High School East in June 1988. Investigators believe she was either strangled or had her throat cut.

Another man, Rodney Woidtke, was convicted by a judge of murdering Cardenas. Woidtke received a 45-year prison sentence. Ressler said he is 95 percent certain that Anderson, not Woidtke, killed Woidtke is innocent, Ressler said flatly. "Get him out of prison." Woidtke, a mentally ill transient who confessed to the Cardenas murder after hours of questioning, has spent a decade in prison. The crime scene investigator in the case has said that he believes Woidtke is innocent. Attorneys are now battling in court to free him.

Ressler said he is 80 percent sure that Anderson also killed West, Jany, Povolish and the unidentified woman. Gregory R. Bowman, 47, has spent 20 years of a life sentence in prison for the West and Jany murders. He confessed to the crimes after police questioned him intermittently for eight months. Ressler says he does not believe Bowman would have been capable of killing Jany or West - especially in the premeditated way in which they were murdered. Bowman's past crimes were spontaneous, whereas evidence shows that the Jany and West murders were carefully planned, Ressler said.

Following Ressler's statements casting doubt on Bowman's guilt, St. Clair County sheriff's deputy, Sgt. Robert Miller admitted he tricked Bowman into confessing. The county's then chief prosecutor said last week that had authorities known about the deputy's trick, the confession could have been thrown out and the case against Bowman dismissed. The deputy said it was his idea to have a jail-house snitch approach Bowman and tell him he'd help him escape if he confessed. "Convince him you can get him out if he says something" about the murders, Miller said he told the other prisoner.

Bowman, who'd already served time behind bars, said he agreed to the snitch's offer because he was terrified of being sent back to prison. He also thought he had a solid alibi that would prove he hadn't committed the crimes. Clyde Kuehn, the former state's attorney who charged Bowman, said he knew nothing about the ruse and called it "absolutely upsetting."

Bowman has been working as a computer programmer at Joliet and is considered a model prisoner. He said he went into a mental tailspin after he was found guilty. He said he couldn't fight his conviction at the same time he coped with life behind prison walls.

Both Woidtke and Bowman immediately recanted their confessions and maintain their innocence. No physical evidence tied the men to the murders. Ressler said there are too many links between the five murders to ignore. "I can't say for 100 percent sure" that Anderson killed all of the women, Ressler said. "The fact is, I mean, my God, these crimes happened within this small perimeter of Belleville, and they got closer (to Anderson's home) as he got more comfortable."

The evidence shows that whoever killed West and Jany carefully planned their abductions and killings, Ressler said. It's probable an acquaintance or someone posing as a police officer tricked the women into a car, he said. Anderson was a former welfare case worker and onetime St. Clair County Sheriff's Department jailer. He believes none were abducted initially by force. Even though other people were in the area where some of the women were abducted or killed, none reported hearing or seeing anything that would have indicated a struggle. Ressler also said that all of the bodies were moved and concealed. None of the crime scenes produced any physical evidence - hair, fingerprints or fiber - from the killer. And none of the victims had defensive wounds - bruising on the arms or flesh under their fingernails. That shows the killer had complete control over them when they were murdered, Ressler says.

Convicted murderer Dale R. Anderson said he agrees with the nation's leading expert on serial killers that the same person murdered Audrey Cardenas and four other women in the Belleville area. Yet, Anderson says he's not the killer. Anderson, 47, didn't appear surprised when he learned that former FBI profiler Robert K. Ressler linked him to the five murders.

"These cases and a lot of other cases you don't know about are connected," Anderson said during an interview Tuesday at Menard Correctional Center near Chester, Ill. "But I haven't murdered anyone."

Anderson said he can unlock the 13-year mystery of the unidentified woman's identity. He insists he has her drivers license, something police have never recovered. He refused to reveal where it's hidden, or the woman's name and address. Anderson said he knows a lot about the murders because he investigated them as a police officer. Anderson was a St. Clair County sheriff's jailer when West and Jany were killed in 1978, but he was never a police officer.

He claims he has pictures and files on all of the women from before and after they were murdered. He said he believed the police took the evidence out of his Belleville home when he was arrested for the Lanman murders. Police found file folders filled with memos, notes and newspaper articles on Cardenas, the unidentified woman and Povolish in Anderson's locked safe when they searched his home in 1989. Anderson said he kept files on West and Jany as well.

Anderson said the murdered women were all conned into a car by their killer, who told them he was a police officer. Anderson often had posed as a police officer. "You don't know how easy it is for a police officer to lure someone into a car," Anderson said. "She's walking down the street late at night and someone drives up and says, `I'm a police officer. Get in.' She's young and doesn't know she's about to be murdered."

Samuel Sidyno (7+) Police are not ruling out the possibility that the hills around Pretoria could be littered with the remains of more victims of alleged serial killer Samuel Sidyno. This announcement follows the discovery of a seventh body found January 16, 1999, by a group of children hiking in Mountain View in the Magaliesberg.

Senior Superintendent Rudi van Olst, commander of murder and robbery, said there was a possibility of more bodies being found in the hills around Pretoria. "By taking into account certain similarities between the murder scenes at Capital Hill and the recent one, we can say beyond reasonable doubt that it is the work of the serial killer Samuel Sidyno. The modus operandi is very similar to the Capital Hill murders," he said.

Sidyno was arrested on January 6, two days after the body of a fourth victim was found on a hill close to Pretoria's zoo. So far the bodies of two women, a 12-year-old boy, two 19-year-old men and another man all badly decomposed have been found at Capital Hill.

Nikolai Dzhurmongaliev (7+) Possibly Russia's most industrious cannibal, Nikolai Dzhurmongaliev has claimed to have killed between seven to 100 women, and served many of them to his dinner guests. Nikolai used at least 47 of his victims to make ethnic dishes for his neighbors in the Russian republic of Kyargyzstan. When arrested, Nikolai pointed out that two women could provide enough delicate meat to keep him going for a week.

Nikolai started his cannibal-killer career by bribing his way out of an insane asylum. He believed that women and prostitution were the root of all that was wrong in the world. According to Yuri Dubyagin, an officer of the Interior Ministry Colonel, Nikolai seemed "absolutely normal, but at one point got a taste for female meat." He describes Nikolai as having the brains of a "lone wolf" and being a very powerful man. "When we arrested him," said Dubyagin, "he hit me with the force of Jean Claude Van Damme."

Robert Berdella (7+) Another from the maniac-with-a-heart-of-gold file. Bob ran a booth in the Westport Flea Market in Kansas City where he sold earrings that sported human teeth and skulls in it. All his neighbors thought he was a strange but harmless fellow. That is, until April 2, 1988, when a man jumped from the second floor window of Bob's house wearing nothing but a dog collar. That definitely caught the neighbors' attention. A subsequent police search found two dead bodies inside the house. Apparently Bob liked to pick up drifters and male prostitutes, take them home and strap them into his custom-made torture bed. There he would experiment with electroshock and injected all kinds of household cleaners into their veins. He kept a detailed log of how his victims responded and had a collection of two hundred pictures of naked men in different stages of suffering. Bob liked to extend the life of his victims for a few days before tying a plastic bag over their heads. On December 19, 1988, Berdella pleaded guilty to murder and was sentenced to life. A few years later he died in prison of poisoning or a possible heart attack. While in prison Bob complained about having too many roaches in his cell. A local radio station decided to start "Bugs for Berdella," a collection of bugs from all over that was sent to him.

Harrison Graham (7+) This lethal junkie from hell lived in a fetid two-room apartment in North Philadelphia that was covered with trash, dirty syringes and a sea of fleas. In the summer of 1987, after numerous complaints from his neighbors, the police pried his door open and found six female bodies in different states of decomposition. On the roof of his building they found a duffel bag full of legs. In the neighbor's basement they found a torso. All the dead women were black junkies like himself who he invited over for a fix and a little one-on-one.

Peter Manuel(7+)

Gert van Rooyen(7+) A murderous pedophile in Pretoria, South Africa. He kidnapped, sexually abused, and murdered 6 young teenage girls before offing himself and his mistress, Joey Haarhof with a 357, when the local heat closed in on him after a car chase.

Carlton Gary (7+) Known as the "Stocking Strangler," Carlton is on Georgia's death row for a string of strangulation murders of elderly women between 1977 and 1978. Suspected in at least seven murders in Columbus, Georgia, Carlton was convicted in 1986 of only three. All seven killings happened within Columbus' Wynnton neighborhood, a comfortable neighborhood with towering trees, stately homes, and well manicured lawns. All victims were wealthy white elderly ladies between 59 to 89 years old. In most cases they were raped, strangled with their own stockings, and left lying on their backs covered with bed clothes.

Carlton -- one of the few black serial killers of the seventies -- was a ladies man who enjoyed expensive clothing and was a male model. An all-out renaissance-type, he played drums, the saxophone and was an amateur artist. Though he worked as a janitor, he was said to be highly intelligent and have a phenomenal memory. He was arrested May 3, 1984 -- six years after the killings -- in Albany, Georgia, after police to traced a stolen pistol from one of the "Strangler" killings to Gary.

Always in trouble with the law, Carlton's extensive criminal past can be traced all the way back to 1967 when he was arrested as a juvenile in Gainesville, Florida. In 1970 he was a suspect in the slaying of an 84 year old school teacher in Albany, NY. Gary drew a 10 year sentence after he agreed to testify against his accomplice. Subsequently he was jailed three more times in New York before escaping from prison. Later he confessed to five 1978 restaurant robberies in Columbus, while serving time in Greenville, S.C. for armed robbery. He was serving a 21 year sentence in SC when he escaped. Prior to his arrest in the "Stocking Strangler" case he was arrested and charged with obstruction of a police officer, possession of marijuana and was suspected in restaurant robberies in Phenix City, Alabama and Gainesville Fl.

Paul Frederick Runge (7) On June 14, 2001, Paul Frederick Runge, 31, was charged in Chicago with murdering and sexually assaulting six women and a 10-year-old girl in a string of sex attacks in Cook County and DuPage County between 1995 and 1997. The suspect, Paul Frederick Runge, has been behind bars since 1997, when he was arrested for a parole violation. Police said Runge has confessed to all seven killings and was linked to two of the crimes through DNA.

The victims were bludgeoned to death or strangled -- in most cases after he went to homes that had posted for-sale signs for various things, police said. Other victims were women who had responded to his help-wanted ads for someone to clean his home or merely acquaintances. "Paul Runge is our worst nightmare," Cook County State's Attorney Richard Devine. "He conned his way into women's homes or duped them into trusting him. He then raped and murdered them." Runge had been paroled in 1994 for the kidnapping and sexual assault of a 14-year-old girl in 1987.

Runge is accused in the January 1995 killing of Stacey Frobel, 25, whose body was found in southern Wisconsin and Illinois. Frobel, the mother of a 6-year-old boy, was a friend of Runge's former wife. Six months later, Runge allegedly killed the two Hanover Park women, sisters Dzeneta and Ameal Pasanbegovic, 22 and 20, respectively. Both were recent immigrants from Bosnia who Runge allegedly lured to his home with the promise of house cleaning jobs. After allegedly killing them, Runge dismembered them in a bathtub and dumped their remains in trash bins. Runge also is accused of the 1997 deaths of Dorota Dziubak, 30, who he killed after she advertised her Northwest Side house for sale; Yolanda Gutierrez, 35, and her 10-year-old daughter; and Kazimiera Paruch, 43, of Chicago, were killed after they advertised their condominium for sale.

On August 9 Paul Runge pleaded not guilty to sexually assaulting and killing four women and a 10-year-old girl in Cook County. Runge previously pleaded not guilty in DuPage County to murder charges in the deaths of two Hanover Park sisters. Prosecutors said that Runge, 31, confessed to the slayings.

Guy Georges (7) From 1991 to 1997 the lethal "Beast of Bastille" is suspected of having tortured, raped and killed seven women in the neighborhood of the famed Revolutionary era Parisian prison. On March 27, 1998, French police picked up Guy Georges in Montmartre after police DNA-matched him to four Beast of Bastille murders and one attempted rape. (cont.)

Robert Rozier (4+) As a football player, Rozier was drafted by the St. Louis Cardinals and later did time with the Oakland Raiders. In 1981, he lost his will to play the game, and after drifting around the country, he joined a radical black-supremacist Hebrew Israelite sect called the Temple of Love. The cult, led by Yahweh ben Yahweh is believed to be responsible for fourteen deaths and a series of firebombings. Rozier, perhaps due to his football background, acted as the muscle of the cult. In 1986 he was arrested for the murders of two ex members. Evidence also linked him to at least two other random killings unrelated to the sect.

In 1992, Rozier was convicted of committing four murders under orders from the cult. Later he admitted to seven killings and was sentenced to 22 years in prison. He was released after 10 years in 1996, after testifying against Yahweh and other followers. Rozier became a federally protected witness in 1996, relocated to his home in California and changed his name.He was recently arrested for violating his program agreement by writing bad checks totaling $125.24, which due to a new "three strikes" California law might send him to prison for life.

On March 24, 1999, New Jersey prosecutors charged Rozier with stabbing a homeless white man to death in Newark as a sacrifice to Yahweh Ben Yahweh. Prosecutors said Rozier, 43, stabbed Attilio Cicala in 1984 as a sacrifice a few days before the cult's leader was to visit Newark. At the time Rozier was the leader of Newark's Temple. Another former cultist, John Armstrong, 40, was charged with murder. Presently Rozier is in jail in California on $1 million bail.

"The Axeman of New Orleans" (7)

Ivan Robert Marko Milat (7+) Australia's worst serial killer, Ivan was convicted of murdering seven hitch-hikers plucked from the highway stretching from Sydney to Melbourne. Like convicted Alaskan serial killer Robert Hansen, Ivan enjoyed hunting down his victims like animals, giving them a head start before stalking them through the New South Wales bush.

Ivan, 51, a road worker, avid hunter and the son of a Croat immigrant, was a non-smoking teetotaler, whose pleasures in life were a four-wheel-drive vehicle, a Harley Davidson motorcycle and a penchant for killing strangers. He was arrested in 1994 in his home in the outskirts of Sydney where police found gun parts, ammunition and knives used in the killings, as well as camping equipment said to have belonged to some of the murdered hitch-hikers.

From 1989 to 1992, Milat was known as the "Backpack Murderer". The brutality of his attacks both captivated and horrified the Australian public. Some of the victims were shot, others stabbed, and one was decapitated with a sword found in Ivan's mother's apartment. He then equipped his rifle with a silencer and used the victim's head for "target practice". Of the seven killed, five were European tourists in their 20s lured to Australia by its reputation as a safe haven for budget travelers. The other two victims were teen-agers from the Australian state of Victoria. Two of the dead were young British women whose disappearance led to the grim discovery of Milat's handiwork.

After the discovery of seven bodies, police launched the biggest manhunt in Australian history which eventually led to Milat's arrest. The star witness for the prosecution was another British tourist who escaped from the madman's car to avoid certain death after Milat pulled a gun on him. The kind authorities of New South Wales offered free accommodations and financial assistance to the relatives of the victims who wished to attend the trial.

On July 27, 1996 , after a four-month trial and three and a half days of deliberation, a jury of seven men and four women convicted the former road worker of murdering the seven backpackers. Ivan's lawyer tried to pin the murders on, first, Ivan's brother Richard, then, his other brother, Walter. Although his divisionary tactics were not successful, Justice David Hunt, the judge presiding the over the case, said: "In my view, it is inevitable that the prisoner was not alone in that criminal enterprise". Police said there were more than a dozen young hitchhikers - Australians, Japanese and Europeans - who have disappeared in the same region over the past 15 years. Perhaps soon we will be adding another Milat brother to the Serial Killer Hit List.

On May 17, 1997, Milat was placed under guard in Sydney's high security Long Bay prison after calling off a "meticulously planned" breakout attempt he planned with his cellmate, George Savvas, and two other inmates. Through phone taps, intelligence within the jail and deciphering a code used by the prisoners, prison officials uncovered the escape plan that involved overpowering prison guards, scaling a perimeter wall using rope ladders and meeting armed associates outside waiting in cars.

The morning after being interviewed about the escape by prison officials Savvas, 46, was found dead hanging from a bed sheet in his high security cell at Maitland prison. Although prison officials did not detect any suicidal tendencies in Savvas in their last hours with him, they acknowledged the prisoner must have been affected by the failed escape and the prospect of life under even tighter security.

Police are investigating whether friends or family members of Milat helped plan the escape. When members of the Milat family were asked about the escape they said they knew nothing of the plan. "Did he try to escape or is it just the authorities saying that he did?" Milat's brother Walter said. Walter, who had recently visited his brother, said Ivan was distressed by the way his appeal was moving, and angry he had missed out on getting legal aid.

Aileen Wuornos (7) The patron saint of dead prostitutes, Lee Wuornos is the first prostitute to turn the tables on the serial killing scene. Finally, a hooker who started offing her johns. The daughter of a child molester who hanged himself in jail, Aileen's hatred for men went beyond the feelings of any penis-loathing lesbian. In 1989 and 1990 she tallied seven dead middle-aged johns whom she left naked next to their sperm-filled condoms. The wily prostitute still claims to be innocent. Her killings, she says, were "just self-defense." She was sentenced to death six times, and for over a decade patiently awaited her fate. While in jail, she conveniently found Christ.

On April 18, 2000, the convicted serial killer said she wanted a new trial for her 1992 conviction in the death of Charles Carskaddon in Pasco County because her attorney at the time was ill-prepared to represent her. Joseph Hobson, an attorney for Florida¹s capital collateral office, presented the appeal to Circuit Court Judge Wayne Cobb. Hobson said Wuornos¹ attorney at the time, Steven Glazer, had virtually no experience in death penalty cases. Glazer allegedly also took a cut from deals with media outlets that paid thousands of dollars for interviews with his client and was filmed for a British documentary smoking marijuana on the way to see Wuornos in prison. Previously Wuornos asked a judge in Daytona Beach to overturn her conviction for the 1992 slaying of Richard Mallory because of ineffective counsel in that trial too.

At 9:47 a.m., October 9, 2002, Wuornos was executed by lethal injection at 9:47 a.m. at the Florida State Prison near Starke. Wuornos, 46 at the time of her death, became the 10th woman executed in the United States since the death penalty resumed in 1976, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. "I'd just like to say I'm sailing with the Rock and I'll be back like Independence Day with Jesus, June 6, like the movie, big mothership and all. I'll be back," Wuornos said from the execution chamber.

Wuornos was sentenced to death six times for killing six middle-aged johns in 1989 and 1990 and spent a decade on Florida's death row. The death warrant was based on her first murder victim, Richard Mallory, a Clearwater electronics shop owner whose body was found in 1989 in Volusia County.

Wuornos said she had decided to rob a customer because she feared she was about to lose her lesbian lover and needed to raise $200 so they could rent an apartment. Mallory picked her up on a rainy night. They drank, drove into the woods and fell asleep. When she awoke, she took out her gun, woke Mallory up and robbed him. Then she started shooting.

After killing Mallory, Wuornos laid low for several months until mid-1990, when she murdered and robbed her second victim on another rainy day. Over the next few months of Florida's rainy season, she killed four more men.

Wuornos, who also claims to have killed a seventh man, said she killed and robbed when it rained because it made her "nasty looking" and she couldn't make enough money as a prostitute. She pawned some of her victims' possessions. Her five-county killing spree ended Jan. 9, 1991, in the Last Resort, a Daytona Beach biker bar where a plaque about her arrest now hangs on the wall. Wuornos, nicknamed "the Damsel of Death," was convicted of Mallory's slaying and pleaded no contest to murders in Marion, Dixie, Pasco and Citrus counties. She received six death sentences.

"She was a homicidal predator," Tanner said at her 1992 trial in Daytona Beach. "She was like a spider on the side of the road, waiting for prey -- men." Billy Nolas, who represented Wuornos in that trial, said she suffers from borderline personality disorder as a result of neglect and sexual abuse as a child.

"She is the most disturbed individual I have represented," said Nolas, who now practices law in Philadelphia. He said Wuornos is too mentally ill to comprehend what dropping her appeals and seeking death will mean.

Nolas said he believes Mallory raped Wuornos and that pushed her over the edge. Information on Mallory's prior history of sexual assault was withheld from defense attorneys, he said.

Wuornos was raised by her grandparents. Her mother abandoned her when she was an infant and her father, a convicted child molester, committed suicide in prison. By age 14, she was pregnant, claiming to have been raped. She was forced to give up the child and was turning tricks at age 15. When she was asked about the killings at her competency exam, Tanner said the former prostitute replied, "I really got tired of it all. I was angry about the johns."

For years, Wuornos claimed she shot the men out of self-defense while being raped and sodomized. Later, she recanted her claims, saying she wanted to make peace with God. "I'm one who seriously hates human life and would kill again," she told the state Supreme Court. Wuornos also claimed to have killed a seventh man.

The state Supreme Court rejected two efforts to stop the execution the day before, one from a private attorney in Tampa who expressed "serious concerns" about Wuornos' competency, the other from an Ohio group that wanted to file an appeal on Wuornos' behalf. Billy Nolas, who represented Wuornos in her 1992 trial in Daytona Beach, said she suffered from borderline personality disorder as a result of neglect and sexual abuse as a child. He said she was "the most disturbed individual I have represented."

Fort Lauderdale lawyer Raag Singhal wrote a letter to the state Supreme Court last month expressing "grave doubts" about Wuornos' mental condition. Gov. Jeb Bush issued a stay and ordered a mental exam, but lifted the stay last week after three psychiatrists who interviewed her concluded that she understood why she was being executed. State Attorney John Tanner, who watched psychiatrists interview her for 30 minutes last week, said she was cognizant and lucid. "She knew exactly what she was doing," Tanner said.

Efren Saldivar (6-50) A former respiratory care practitioner at a Glendale hospital Efren Saldivar confessed to killing 40 to 50 patients over a eight-year period. A suspected "Angel of Death," he allegedly targeted patients who were already near death. He would kill them with lethal injections of the muscle relaxants Pavulon or succinylcholine chloride, and/or decreasing their oxygen intake if they were on ventilators.

Saldivar allegedly told police that the killings began in 1989, six months after he started working at the hospital, and stopped in August 1997 when he heard that one of his co-workers had seen morphine in his locker. The hospital first heard rumors about hastened patient deaths in April 1997. Although the two-month internal investigation revealed nothing suspicious, a criminal investigation was launched after police received an anonymous phone call on March 3 from a person saying Saldivar "helped a patient die fast." Saldivar told police he might have contributed to "anywhere from 100 to 200" deaths during his 9-year career as a hospital worker and had actively killed up to 50 patients by giving drugs or withholding treatment.

Not a random killer, Saldivar -- who co-workers said had a "magic syringe" -- prided himself on following an ethical set of criteria determining who to kill: they had to be unconscious, they had to have a "Do not resuscitate" order, and they had to look like they were ready to die. In an affidavit, Officer William Currie, who interviewed Saldivar, said: "He talked about his anger at seeing patients kept alive as opposed to the guilt he would feel at the failure to provide life-saving care." He said that a polygraph examiner asked Saldivar if he considered himself an "angel of death" and Saldivar replied: "Yes."

Bizarrely, police could only detain Saldivar for 48-hours after his March 3 confession because of lack of corroborating evidence. When his confession surfaced in the press on March 25, 1998, Saldivar was fired from the hospital and his license was revoked. Efren then went on the ABC-TV news magazine "20/20" were he recanted everything, saying he had lied because he was depressed, suicidal and wanted to be sent to death row. "I wanted the system to do to me what I couldn't do," that is, commit suicide. "I was looking to die, I wanted to die ... but I didn't have the courage."

"I figured, you know, one death isn't gonna be enough for the death penalty so I said two... And then I started to cry because I was ending my life." Allegedly, as the interrogation went on, he started embellishing his murderous tale and the confession snowballed into the 50 deaths that made the front page of newspapers worldwide. As for the co-worker who allegedly found morphine and succinycholine chloride in his locker, Efren said the man hated him and had "a plan to get rid of me."

Glendale police spokesperson Sgt. Rick Young dismissed Saldivar retraction as self-serving and insisted the remarks would not affect the criminal investigation. In fact, Glendale police said for the first time that they believe that at least one murder was committed. However, no arrest warrant has been issued because they still lack necessary evidence.

Investigators reviewed the deaths of 171 patients who died while Saldivar was working at the hospital. Fifty-four cases were eliminated because bodies had been cremated. Of the remainder, 20 deaths were determined to have been suspicious and the bodies were exhumed. Toxicological tests revealed the presence of the drug Pavulon in the remains of the six patients ages 75 to 87. On January 10, 2001, police rearrested Saldivar and charged him with the deaths of six hospital patients.

Hospitals frequently use Pavulon to stop the normal breathing of patients who are put on artificial respiratory devices, said Deputy District Attorney Al Mackenzie, who will handle the case. "If you're going to do surgery, you're going to put the person on an artificial breathing device," Mackenzie said. "If you give the person the drug Pavulon and don't create an artificial means to breathe, they die."

On March 12, 2002, Saldivar, after striking a deal with prosecutors to avoid the death penalty, pleaded guilty to murdering six elderly patients and was sentenced to seven consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole. "It still seems so unreal," said Larry Schlegel, whose 77-year-old mother, Eleanora, was found dead in her hospital bed in 1997. "It's just that whole thing that it can never happen to you." Seven lawsuits have been filed against the hospital. Four have been dismissed. The family of Salbi Asatryan, one of the victims, accepted a $60,000 settlement. Another family, that of Jose Alfaro, also settled for an undisclosed amount.

Mohamed Elsayed Ghanam (6+) On June 5, 1999, Mohamed Elsayed Ghanam, an Egyptian tour guide was arrested in connection with the murder of six foreign tourists who vanished after arriving at Bangkok's Don Muang airport over the past eight months. Police say the killings were carried out between August 17, 1999 and April 6 and followed a similar pattern.

Chanam Said Muhamad, 35, was arrested after European Union embassies confronted the Thai government about the murders and expressed concern there may be more victims. The killer and his accomplices, posing as tour guides and private taxi drivers, allegedly targeted tourists who had just arrived in Bangkok. They waited for the victims at their hotels and at the airport, offered their services, then robbed and killed them. Mohamed has denied carrying out the killings and has blamed two associates from the Middle East.

All six victims -- two Frenchmen, an Austrian, an Iranian, a German, and a man from the United Arab Emirates -- were stabbed to death. Interpol repeatedly told local police the murders could be linked but Thai authorities failed to launch an inquiry.

Andras Pandy (6-13) On October 20, 1997 Belgian authorities charged Andras Pandy -- a 70-year-old protestant pastor from Hungary -- with the murder of two of his ex-wives and four of his eight children. His daughter Agnes, 40, who claims that her father sexually abused her from the age of 13, confessed to helping kill five family members and was charged as an accessory to the murders. This arrest -- coupled with the nefarious Dutroux affair and a serial rampage gripping Mons -- is starting to make this sleepy northern European nation look like the bedrock of worldwide serial mayhem.

In 1997 police started digging for human remains in several abandoned properties owned by Pandy in the seedier parts of Brussels. They found kneecaps, teeth, bone fragments and ashes in one of the cellars, but DNA tests showed they were not from the missing Pandy family members. It remains unclear whose body parts those were. Authorities also found a blood splattered wall in another of the homes and "large pieces of unspecified flesh" stocked inside two fridges." The preacher's arrest followed a joint investigation by Belgian and Hungarian authorities.

Pandy came to Brussels after the Hungarian uprising in 1956 and had three children, including Agnes, with his first wife, Ilona Sores. The couple divorced in 1967 and Pandy later married Edit Fintor, who already had three children and who gave birth to two more by Pandy. Until he retired in 1992, Pandy worked as a Protestant pastor and religious education teacher. In a statement, the United Protestant Church of Belgium said Pandy had retired as a teacher in 1992 and held no post within the church.

Not one for family planning, between 1961 and 1971 the pastor fathered eight. Between 1986 and 1989 four of his children and two former wives began disappearing. Later he claimed they were all alive and well back in Hungary. Curiously, no ever saw them again since they left. To appease investigators, the crafty preacher used fake papers and postcards to try to prove the six were alive and well and had moved back to Hungary.

Hungarian police found two girls and a boy who had on several ocassions impersonated the missing children of the suspect killer pastor Andras Pandy. "He took the children on family visits to relatives and friends in Hungary, who were then asked to send letters saying they had seen the children." Allegedly Pandy recruited the children in 1992 -- when Belgian police first began investigating him -- and used them several times. The children never suspected any wrongdoing because they "were told it was a rehearsal for a part in a movie about Pandy's life"

In Hungary investigators are trying to establish whether Pandy could be linked to any of 60 "missing person" cases which have remain unsolved since the early Eighties. Investigators used sniffer dogs to search the preacher's home in Dunakeszi, north of Budapest. In Belgium police brought in sonar devices -- similar to those employed at the Gloucester home of serial killers Frederick and Rosemary West -- to investigate the six interconnected cellars under his second home. Questions have also been raised over the identity of the pastor. Belgian investigators think the man in custody could be the younger brother of the real Andras Pandy, who died in Hungary in 1956.

Agnes Pandy confessed to police that she and her father either shot or sledgehammered to death five relatives -- her mother, two brothers, a stepmother and her daughter. Then they chopped up the bodies and used a powerful drain cleaner to dissolve the corpses and flush them down the drain. Agnes told authorities that her preacher dad had been raping her since age 13. He also regularly raped his stepdaughters. Things got ugly when 20-year-old Timea, one of the stepdaughter, became pregnant. Pandy tried to kill her and her son, but she managed to escape to Canada and then Hungary.

Authorities have also linked Agnes to the disappearance in 1993 of a 12-year-old girl whose Hungarian mother had a relationship with Pastor Pandy. Belgian newspapers reported that five years ago Agnes notified police that several members of her family were missing. At the time, she also denounced her father for sexually abusing her and her step-sisters. In true Belgian fashion, nothing came of it and charges were eventually dropped.

The Hungarian Nepszava newspaper reported that Pandy fostered an undetermined number of orphaned or homeless Romanian children in his home in Brussels. The children -- who became orphaned or homeless in Romania's 1989 revolution which toppled communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu -- were taken in by a charity club named YDNAP (PANDY backwards) founded by the lethal pastor. They stayed under his care for varying periods of time, "and nobody knows what happened to them or if they returned home." In Brussels, press reports speculated that bones found under a concrete slab in one of Pandy's homes were those of a Hungarian woman who arrived in Belgium with her daughter after replying to a personal add placed by the pastor in search of a wife.

On April 24 tests by Norwegian forensic scientists showed that the new set of teeth discovered were from seven women, aged between 35 and 55, and a man, who was between 18 and 23. It is suspected that the unidentified victims were lured from Hungary to Belgium with promises of marriage. Police had previously thought that the teeth, bones and other remains found at Pandy's house might have come from five people unrelated to him.

On March 6, 2002, a Belgian court convicted of Pandy of killing six family members and dissolving their bodies in chemical drain cleaner. He was sentenced to life in prison. His daughter 44-year-old Agnes Pandy, received a 21-year sentence for being an accomplice in five murders and one attempted murder. Pandy, who is Hungarian but moved to Belgium to escape Communism, was found guilty of murdering two wives and four children, one of which, a daughter, he also was convicted of raping. Not the cornerstone in family values, he was convicted of raping Agnes and another daughter.

Prosecutors had requested a 29-year sentence for Agnes, but her lawyers pushed for leniency, saying Agnes had been under the "overwhelming irresistible spell" of a father who was raping her as he coerced her into collaborating in the killings of her mother and siblings. "I had no way out. I was completely in his grip," Agnes said in her closing statement.

In court, Pandy dismissed the proceedings as a "witch trial" against him. He told the jury that the allegedly dead were still alive and he is "in contact with them through angels." When asked why the missing family members could not be traced in four years of searching, Pandy replied: "It is up to justice to prove they are dead. When I'm free again, they will come and visit me."

Orville Lynn Majors (7+) On December 29, 1997, police arrested and charged Orville Lynn Majors, a 36-year-old former male nurse, with lethally injecting six patients at an Indiana hospital. No stranger to deadly nursing care, Orville lost his nurse's license in 1995 after 130 of 147 elderly patients died in his care. While working at Vermillion County Hospital, now known as West Central Community Hospital, a death occurred every 23.1 hours when he was on duty. When he was off duty, a death occurred every 551.6 hours.

More than 160 suspicious deaths happened during Orville's watch at the Terre Haute hospital between 1993 and 1995. The rate of death at the hospital reached "epidemic" proportions from July to December of 1994, during which Majors was "uniquely and very strongly associated with that mortality." Of the 67 people who died in the intensive care unit, Majors was working on 63 of those instances. Morbidly, fellow nurses on the night shift made bets as to what patients would die the next day when Majors was working.

The suspected angel of death -- who is being held without a bond -- denied any wrongdoing. After a 30-month investigation costing more than $1.5 million authorities searched his van and former home finding, potassium chloride, a variety of other drugs, syringes and needles. Before filing charges, the bodies of 15 patients were exhumed -- including the six the chubby nurse is charged with killing -- and post mortem examinations on three produced evidence of potassium chloride injections

In at least one case, investigators say they have an eyewitness, Paula Holdaway, who said she was in the room when Majors came in and gave her mother, Dorothea Hixon, an unauthorized injection. "Majors kissed her on the forehead, brushed her hair back and said 'It's all right punkin, everything's going to be all right now.' Within 60 seconds after that, Hixon rolled her eyes back and died."

In court documents, some relatives say they saw Majors give their loved ones shots before they died. And a team of doctors assembled by the Indiana State Police to review medical charts will testify the seven deaths are consistent with patients being injected with potassium chloride or epinephrine. Police say vials containing traces of those drugs and syringes, which were found at Majors' home and in his van, were traced to shipments from medical suppliers to Vermillion County Hospital.

I. Marshall Pinkus, the court-appointed attorney who leads Majors' defense, says there is no evidence his client did anything wrong. Pinkus says jurors won't find it unusual that nurses give patients shots or that sick, elderly patients die in intensive care units. Some patients and co-workers at the hospital considered Majors a hardworking and sympathetic nurse, Pinkus said.

Roman Burtsev (6+) Accused of raping and murdering at least six children Roman is the latest serial killer to surface in Rostov-on-Don, the former stomping grounds of the cannibal killer Andrei Chikatilo. Burtsev, 25, was arrested in July 1996, and confessed to the killings, giving investigators detailed descriptions of the crime scenes.

Burtsev told police he often felt remorse and on one occasion even donated 5,000 rubles (90 U.S. cents) for the funerals of one of his victims, a 12-year-old girl. A divorcee with a 10-month-old son, Roman allegedly committed the murders out of a fear of being punished for his sex crimes.

The news of Roman's upcoming trial came just days after another local resident, Vladimir Mukhankin, pleaded guilty to murdering eight women and was sentenced to death by the city court. Local officials claim the frequency of serial killing in their rustic community only testifies to the efficiency of their police. "It's not that other regions don't have such monsters," said Zakhar Lukinov, a deputy regional chief prosecutor. "Simply no one hears about them."

Samuel Bongani Mfeka (6+) Samuel Bongani Mfeka -- another in what is becoming a long line of South African killers -- was arrested on September 8, 1996, in KwaZulu Natal on a rape charge. While in custody Samuel pointed out six areas where the bodies of women who had been raped and strangled were hidden.

The first murder dates to 1993 following the discovery of a body in Carletonville. Another body was found in the veld in Vrede in November, 1994. The four other bodies have since been found in the Kranskop area. The last body found on September 8, 1996, was in an advanced state of decomposition. According to a police source, four of the bodies were found within easy distance of the suspect's house in a rural area in KwaZulu Natal.

A police spokesman announced that Mfeka was also being questioned in relation to the 15 bodies attributed to the "Nasrec Strangler". Although he has not been officially charged with the killings, they have spotted similarities between both killers. Detectives are also searching for another man who may have been an accomplice of the suspect. He too is wanted for questioning in connection with the Nasrec murders.

Gerald Parker (6+) Known as the "Bedroom Basher," serial rapist Gerald Parker thought he had gotten away with murder until DNA testing linked him to the murder of five women and an unborn child in Orange County, California. Parker, a former Marine, was linked through genetic evidence to attacks on young women who where raped and bludgeoned in their homes in the late 1970s around El Toro Marine Corps Air Station. Police and Navy officials believe Gerald might be responsible for even more killings, specifically three other dead women in Orange County. During his 7 1/2 years with the Marines Gerald was based in El Toro as well as other bases in North Carolina, Alaska and Mississippi before being convicted of raping a 13-year-old girl in 1980.

That same year another Marine, Kevin Lee Green, was convicted of second degree murder for an attack on his 21-year-old pregnant wife that led to the death of their unborn baby. 16 years later, Parker confessed to the attack on Green's wife. On June 20, 1996 Superior Court Judge Robert Fitzgerald apologized for Green's wrongful incarceration and declared him a free and innocent man. Curiously his ex-wife Dianna D'Aiello still believes he was her attacker.

Using new technology that can match DNA samples of convicted criminals with evidence of unsolved crimes investigators were able to link several unsolved murders of young women to Parker. On June 14 detectives met with Parker in the Avenal State Prison in Central Valley where he was imprisoned for a parole violation. There he confessed to five killings and the assault on Dianna D'Aiello.

D'Aiello was comatose for a month after her 1979 attack and suffered a significant loss of memory. When she regained consciousness she identified her husband as her attacker. Jurors believed her and considered his alibi, that he went to get a cheeseburger, unbelievable. Ever since he was arrested Green proclaimed his innocence. He even passed a defense-administered polygraph test before the trial. While incarcerated he tried to have a DNA test performed on the semen investigators collected at the crime scene. Unfortunately, he could not afford the costly forensic procedure. Luckily, crucial evidence from the D'Aiello attack had not been destroyed and could be tested when his guilt was brought into question. Once exonerated, the ex-Marine corporal went to visit his family in the Midwest and says he does not plan to sue the state for damages resulting from his wrongful conviction.

Morris Solomon (6+)Another Sacramento celebrity killer. Morris killed mostly prostitutes. Convicted of six killings, he is suspected of at least one more. Ever the good sport, he shook hands with one juror who gave him the death penalty, saying, "At least you made up your mind." His conviction is being appealed.

Douglas Clark & Carol Bundy(6+) Doug considered himself the "king of the one-night stands." He loved sex with prostitutes, especially real young ones from LA's notorious Sunset Strip. Carol, his girlfriend, was no Mother Teresa. She thought that murder was fun and liked photographing hookers sucking Doug's dick. He enjoyed shooting his victims as he came in their mouths. He also liked chopping their heads off. Once, for kicks, Carol applied make-up to a severed head and Doug took it to the shower for a little necrophilic fellatio. Carol told an old boyfriend about Doug's strange habits. When the old boyfriend threatened to tell police, Carol stabbed him to death and chopped off his head. She then confessed and blamed Doug for everything. Doug denied it and claimed that Carol and her former lover were the killers. Strangely he also begged for the death penalty and taunted the judge whenever he could. He was sentenced to death on February 15, 1983. Carol was convicted of two killings.

Michael Ross (6+) Michael Ross, a sexual sadist with an IQ of 122 and a degree from Cornell University, stalked, raped and murdered at least 6 girls and young women in Connecticut in the early 80s. In 1987 he received six death sentences and two life sentences. He has also admitted to killing two women in New York, and assaulting several women in North Carolina, Ohio and Illinois.

This lethal Ivy League graduate captured his victims as they walked along quiet, deserted roads, raping most of them, then flipping them over onto their stomachs and strangling them. In 1982, 17-year-old Tammy Williams of Brooklyn and Debra Smith Taylor, 23, of Griswold were killed. Robyn Stavinsky, 19, of Norwich was murdered in 1983. The following year, Wendy Baribeault, 17, of Jewett City, and two 14-year-old friends, Leslie Shelley and April Brunais, both of Griswold, died.

Since his arrest Mike has been diligently working with his prosecuting attorney trying to obtain a quick death sentence. A model of consideration, Ross said he wanted to be executed to spare the victims' families from having to go through the indignity of more hearings. But in July 1994, the state Supreme Court upheld Ross' Connecticut convictions but overturned the death sentences. Finding that the original trial judge excluded evidence that might have helped Ross prove he suffered from a mental illness or defect, the court ordered a new penalty phase.

On March 11, 1998, Ross -- acting as his own attorney -- signed an agreement with state prosecutors acknowledging that his crimes were cruel and heinous and asking the court to put his execution order into effect. The unprecedented 10-page agreement with special prosecutor C. Robert Satti triggered a legal shit-storm felt throughout the nation. A human rights group called the agreement the product of an "unholy alliance" of the killer and prosecutor. Even the judge in the case expressed reservations, held off accepting the agreement until hearing further arguments on whether it is legal and binding.

On April 2, the death pact was declared not legally binding by the state's public defender office. Then, in a change of heart, Mike decided he did not want to die anymore. In November, Ross attempted suicide in his prison cell at the Northern Correctional Institution in Somers by overdosing on medication. Jury selection for the penalty phase retrail began on April 5, 1999, for his trial that began in 1987. Superior Court Judge Thomas Miano -- who was assigned to hear the case only two years ago -- warned the attorneys involved against further delays and has vowed to bring the case to an end.

On April 7, 1999, jury selection began for Ross' retrial of the penalty phase of his case. The justices said the original jury wasn¹t told about evidence that could have proven Ross suffered from a mental illness, which is considered a mitigating factor that under Connecticut law it could have been used to spare him from the death penalty.

When Ross was charged in 1984 with the murders of Tammy Williams, Debra Smith Taylor, Robin Stavinsky, Leslie Shelley, April Brunais and Wendy Baribeault, it was the most serious crime the county had ever known. The victims hailed from quiet, rural towns in eastern Connecticut where seemingly everyone knew each other.

Ross was originally given six death sentences and two life sentences. In July 1994, the state Supreme Court upheld the convictions but overturned the death sentences. The high court ordered a new penalty phase because the original judge excluded evidence that might have helped Ross prove he suffered from a mental illness or defect.

Under the state law that was in effect at the time of his conviction, Ross could be spared the death penalty if the jury finds a mitigating factor, like mental illness. The defense says Ross suffers from a psychiatric disease called sexual sadism.

According to Dr. James Merikangas Ross has an abnormal brain that could affect his ability to control sadistic sexual urges. Dr. Merikangas, who studied Ross at the request of defense lawyers who are trying to find a mitigating factor that would spare him the death penalty, said he discovered the abnormalities in Ross' brain during a magnetic resonance imaging test, or MRI, and another sophisticated neurological test performed at Yale- New Haven Hospital. Ross' cerebellum is smaller than a normal person's, Merikangas said.

"The cerebellum projects to all other parts of the brain," Merikangas said. "It uses a neurotransmitter to control or suppress other parts of the brain. . . . It is a commonly known fact that people with these kinds of brain impairments cannot conduct themselves as well as those who don't."

In addition, Merikangas said, the tests show Ross suffers from reduced blood flow and reduced metabolism in the rear lobes of his brain and enlarged ventricles that indicate possible shrinkage or loss of brain tissue. "The ventricles are the fluid-filled spaces in the brain," Merikangas explained. "His are too big." Merikangas said the abnormalities appear to be tied to Ross' natural growth as opposed to something caused by a traumatic injury.

On April 6, 2000, a Connecticut court recommended once again the death penalty for serial killer Michael Ross. In the new sentencing hearings jurors rejected the report's conclusion that a psychological disorder, sexual sadism, should be a mitigating factor against the death penalty. Ross' defense attorneys argued the disorder led him to kill the four girls in eastern Connecticut. Ironically Ross wanted to be executed when the Supreme Court voided his sentence. Now that he was sentenced again he has changed his mind and wants his life spared.

On July 14, 2001, Barbara Jean, a reader of the Archives, wrote:

I have been searching for more information on serial killer Michael Ross. Though your site was a little more than I could handle, I would like to thank you for the information I found. Ross killed my best friend, Paula Perrera, in March of 1982. He confessed to the crime in 1998, but is finally making it to NY on August 6, 2001 to be tried for her murder. I was 17 years old when this happened, Paula was only 16. You didn't have her name in the list of his victims. Could you please add her name. Thank you.

Richard Biegenwald (6+) Born in Staten Island, New York in 1940 Rich was the product of a typical serial killing upbringing. Regularly beaten by his alcoholic father, at the age of five he torched the family home. For the rest of his childhood he was bounced from psychiatric hospitals to reformatories. A fast learner, by the time he was eight he developed a drinking and gambling problem. By nine, Rich received experimental shock therapy at New York's Bellevue Hospital.

It is not that surprising that Rich turned into a lethal rapist-murderer when he was an adult. He logged in his first kill at age 18 when he killed the proprietor of a convenience store in Bayonne, New Jersey during a holdup. After serving 17 years he was released on parole in 1975.

A free man, he shacked up with a 16-year-old girl. Soon he was arrested for rape and married his girl while in the Brooklyn House of Detention. Released again, he took up a job as a maintenance man and moved to Asbury Park, New Jersey, where he hooked up with Dherran Fitzgerald, an old prison pal and career criminal.

On January 4, 1983, a friend of his wife fingered him to police after hearing about that the body of 18-year-old Anna Olesiewicz was found behind a restaurant in Asbury Park. Apparently Biegenwald showed his wife's friend a body hidden in his garage. On January 22 police arrested him and found pipe bombs, pistols, a machine gun, knockout drops, pot and a live puff adder snake.

Once in custody Fitzgerald started babbling about a bunch of dead girls buried in Biegenwald's mother's garden in Staten Island. Three corpses were unearthed and Rich was tied up to two other murders. Convicted of five murders he was sentenced to death by lethal injection. Authorities believe he is responsible for at least two more: the murder of an ex-convict police informer and the murder-abduction of a 17-year-old girl. However, it is unknown the amount of women he slayed. Usually he would lure the women into his vehicle with the promise of pot and once he isolated them he would shoot or stab them. One of the girls he killed was the daughter of a mobster who, during his trial, put a $100,000 purse on his head.

Prosecutor John Kay said that he had no idea how many women or men Biegenwald killed but he was sure there were a few. One of the guards that befriended him in jail said Biegenwald told him he had killed close to 300 women in New York, Pensylvannia, New Jersey and Maryland. Although he's still alive, he is no longer listed as being on death row in New Jersey. We have no idea why he was removed, but hopefully they're not thinking about letting him go.

Gary Ray Bowles (6) Gary has been charged with slaying six men along the East Coast in 1994. On May 28, 1999, a Jacksonville jury recommended the death sentence for 37-year-old Bowles. Once on the FBI's "Most Wanted" list as a serial killer of gay men, Bowles first received the death penalty in 1996 for the 1994 murder of Walter Jammell Hinton. However,the sentence was overturned.

Bowles, of Clifton Forge, Va., was placed on the FBI's list of 10 most-wanted fugitives in 1994 for the slayings of four gay men. When he was arrested late that year, he gave police statements about six killings: Hinton's, another in Nassau County, one in Daytona Beach, two in Georgia and one in Maryland.

Like many serial killers, Bowles left a "signature" with each of his victims: he stuffed in the mouths with something. Bowles was caught -- almost by accident -- in Jacksonville, Florida, when he was using an alias, the name "Tim," which he got from the roommate of one of his victims. When authorities questioned him about using the dead man's credit cards, he told them his real name.

On September 11, 1999, Circuit Judge Jack Schemer followed a jury's recommendation, and sentenced Gary Ray Bowles to die in Florida's electric chair. Bowles, 37, first received the death penalty in 1996 for the 1994 murder of Walter Jammell Hinton, but he was given a new sentencing hearing by the Florida Supreme Court. The high court said prosecutors shouldn't have been allowed to use Bowles' admitted hatred of gays against him because it did not prove it led him to murder.

Hinton, 42, was asleep in his bed in Jacksonville when Bowles slammed a 40-pound stepping stone on his head, said Assistant State Attorney Bernie de la Rionda.

Ralph Harris (6) Serial killer Ralph Harris was found guilty by a jury on March 3, 1999, for the August 17, 1992 slaying of a Chatham community resident, and was sentenced to death on March 26. In addition to the death penalty, Cook County Circuit Court Judge Dennis Porter -- who compared the Soth Side resident to John Wayne Gacy -- sentenced Harris to 60 years in prison for trying to kill Patterson's brother and another 15 years in prison for robbing both men.

Authorities believe Harris allegedly committed four murders in 1992. The murder spree was interrupted in August 1992 when Harris was convicted and sentenced to seven years in prison for an 1991 armed robbery. Harris was paroled from prison on Jan. 20, 1995. A month later he started raping and robbing women at gunpoint. Harris also was charged with killing two men in 1995.

Most of victims Harris allegedly murdered were older men. Harris robbed, raped and murdered to feed a drug habit, police said. In total Harris was charged with six murders, 13 armed robberies and six sexual assaults.

When he was charged, some Chicago police detectives noted Harris, who at the tiem of his arrest was 23, didn't fit the usual mold of a serial killer, having been raised in a stable home with good parents.

David Wayne McCall (6) In 1996, an Irving woman who worked as a prostitute escaped from a man who was sexually assaulting her. With the help of witnesses, police arrested David McCall, who was convicted and sentenced to five years' probation.

Evidence in that crime prompted police in Irving, Carrollton, Coppell and Dallas to home in on McCall as a suspect in the unsolved slayings of six women between 1991 and 1996, Irving police Sgt. Tim Kelly said.

According to Kelly authorities have uncovered physical evidence linking the slayings and believe that McCall will be linked through DNA to the deaths.

A Dallas judge ruled yesterday that there is probable cause for McCall to stand trial in the Aug. 13, 1995, slaying of 39- year-old Catherine Casler of Coppell, who was stabbed multiple times while on an early- morning jog. The case is scheduled to go to a Dallas County grand jury, Dallas County Assistant District Attorney Bill Wirskye said.

Kelly described McCall, 35, as an intelligent man who traveled as much as 270 miles a day across North Texas installing siding for a major retailer. Kelly said that Irving police are investigating whether McCall could be tied to other unsolved homicides and sexual assaults. "He's a pretty intelligent guy, but science may very well be what gets him," Kelly said.

McCall has been convicted of a variety of serious crimes: the sexual assault of a young female jogger on an Indiana college campus when he was 15; the 1989 attempted kidnapping of a female jogger in Coppell; and the Irving sexual assault, in which a knife was used, Kelly and other officials said.

The pocketknife used in the assault appears to be the same type used in the Coppell slaying, according to the arrest warrant in the Coppell case. McCall told detectives that on the day of the slaying, he was on a cocaine binge and went to Coppell to get money for drugs from his wife, who worked at a convenience store there.

"He's very cocky, but he also seems like he's ready to tell you upfront that he doesn't recall or remember what he was doing because he was in a drug daze," Kelly said. "That leaves him an out."

The body of Casler, a nurse, was found in a lot on MacArthur Boulevard in Coppell, several blocks from the Sparrow Lane house she shared with her husband, Raymond Casler.

Carrollton police have identified Mr. McCall as a suspect in the slaying of LaCresia Tisdale, 22, in January 1991.

He's also suspected in the deaths of Lacheke A. Grandberry, Alysia Ann Beasley and Ida Gee, all found dead in Dallas between October 1995 and January 1996. Staci Terrell, 25, was found shot to death near Wyche Park in Irving in November 1995.

Though Mrs. Casler was a suburban housewife, the women slain in the five other unsolved cases were prostitutes with drug problems, police said. Three were shot, one was strangled and the other was stabbed.

Debbie Fornuto (6) Amid a long history of bungling by bureaucrats, authorities have begun building a case against Debbie Fornuto whose six babies were all allegedly cot-death victims. Death certificates for all the children, none of whom lived longer than two years, have now been changed by Cook County's current medical examiner, altering the cause of death from sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) to "undetermined". Prosecutors, not mincing words, believe "that all of the deaths were caused by suffocation, and the manner of death is homicide".

Authorities were slow to question any connection between the deaths because Debbie's children were born under different names, or to different men, or in different towns, between 1972 and 1987. Suspicions over the deaths were first raised in 1980, after the fourth baby died. Harry Gedzius, whose brother Delos was then married to Debbie, reported to the medical examiner that her three previous babies had all died mysteriously and was assured that the matter would be investigated.

Debbie's first baby, Denise Marie, born in 1972 when her mother was an unmarried schoolgirl, died six weeks after birth. Over the next four years two more of her babies died. In 1980 -- while married to Delos -- her son Jason died six days after his first birthday. Delos Jr, her fifth child, lived to the ripe age of two but died in 1984. Three years later, baby Danny died 10 weeks after being born.

Daniel Blank (6) Authorities in Polk County, Texas, arrested 35-year-old Daniel Blank on November 14 for six slayings over the past two years in southeast Louisiana. Sheriff Jeff Wiley of Ascension Parish, La., said Blank confessed on videotape to stabbing, bludgeoning or shooting six people -- bosses, neighbors, and customers -- to pay for his gambling habit.

Most attacks were on older victims who lived mostly in upscale neighborhoods and homes. He says some of the victims were targets because they had safes in their homes. Folks in the piney woods town of Onalaska, Texas, say Blank told them he'd moved there last summer to get himself, his wife and their four kids away from crime. A search of Blank's house trailer turned up a machete with traces of blood and human hair on it. According to an ex-employer, "he wanted to have things he never could afford" and at times seemed to have a lot of cash. "He was an excellent mechanic, though, an excellent transmission man."

Blank, one of eight children, grew up in Paulina, in rural St. James Parish. He was sent to a reform school when he was young. Audrey Louque, a sister who lives in Gramercy, said the arrest stunned family members. "He was always quiet," she said. "He never got into trouble since he was in reform school." Next-door neighbors Penny and Mike Darling said the Blanks never tried to make friends or invite the Darlings' children to play with theirs. "After a while, I figured they only wanted to be friends with elderly people. Those are the only people they were real nice to."

On July 23, 1998 prosecutors have dropped two counts of first-degree murder against the ex-girlfriend of alleged serial killer, Daniel Blank. Police arrested Cynthia Bellard days after arresting Blank on five different murder charges in the river parishes. In exchange for having the charges dropped Bellard has agreed to testify about Blank's seven-month killing spree.

On April 11, 2000, a Lousiana District Court convicted Daniel Blank of first-degree murder for the second time and proscribed him a second death penalty. Authorities have charged Blank of killing six River Parishes residents during break-ins. Blank, 37, was convicted September of last year of killing Gonzales resident Lillian Philippe, 71, and sentenced to death by lethal injection. He has yet to stand trial for the murders of Victor Rossi, 41, of St. Amant; Barbara Bourgeois, 58, of Paulina; and Sam and Louella Arcuri, 76 and 69, of LaPlace.

In this his latest trial Blank was convicted of first-degree murder in the May 1997 death of Joan Brock, 55. Jurors saw Blank confess on videotape to stabbing Brock with a butcher knife and stealing her family safe. Defense lawyers argued that Blank, who blamed his crimes on his gambling addiction, was coerced into confessing.

Milton Rhea, an Alexandria counseling psychologist, testified that Blank had a low IQ and an abnormal personality. Rhea also said that Blank suffers from a schizo-affective paranoia disorder, which makes him feel incredibly inadequate and anxiety-ridden at all times. As a child, Blank was struck by a vehicle while riding his bike. Not surprisingly he is believed to suffer from some sort of brain injury.

Ronald Goebel, a neuropsychologist from Shreveport, said that the injury did not affect Blank's brain function. Goebel said Blank had a mild brain dysfunction that caused a learning disability, which, in turn, caused Blank to be frustrated and angry. "While a learning disability may be very frustrating, even little boys with learning disabilities can grow up to be productive citizens," Goebel added. "I don't think criminal behavior should be excused."

Ferdinand Gamper (6) On February, 1996, the sl