This is a list of notable serial killers, by their country of origin or activity.
Convicted serial killers by country
Argentina
- Cayetano Santos Godino - aka Petiso Orejudo; killed 4 individuals before he turned 17
Australia
- Eric Edgar Cooke - killed at least 7 people; last person to be hanged in Western Australia
- Paul Denyer - aka Frankston Serial Killer
- Peter Dupas - serving two life sentences for multiple murder and rape charges
- John Wayne Glover - aka North Shore Granny Killer; found dead in his cell in 2005
- Eddie Leonski - aka Brownout Murderer; killed at least 4 people
- William MacDonald - aka the Sydney Mutilator
- Ivan Milat - aka Backpack Murderer; killed at least 7 tourists
- Christopher Worrell - the Truro murders; killed 7 victims
- James Miller - the Truro murders; convicted of killing 6 victims
- John Justin Bunting, Robert Joe Wagner, Mark Ray Haydon, James Spyridon Vlassakis, Elizabeth Harvey, Thomas Trevilyan - the Snowtown murders; convicted of, or in relation to, killing 10 victims
Austria
- Elfriede Blauensteiner - poisoner of 3 individuals
- Irene Leidolf - Angel of Death who, with 3 other nurses confessed to murdering 49 patients
- Jack Unterweger - author and sexual sadist; convicted of 10 murders; believed to have killed 12 women
Belgium
- Marc Dutroux - Belgian child molester and killer
Canada
- Paul Bernardo - aka the Scarborough Rapist; Ontario man who killed 3 teenage girls (including his wife's sister), with the aid of his wife Karla Homolka
- William Patrick Fyfe - convicted of murdering 5 women; confessed to killing four more individuals in Quebec
- Russell Johnson - killer of 7 women; confined to a mental institution since 1978
- Allan Legere - aka Monster of Miramichi; killer of 5 individuals
- Michael Wayne McGray - convicted of the murders of 4 individuals; confessed to killing 16
- Clifford Olson - murdered eleven children
- Robert Pickton - Current on trial for (and has admitted to) close to 50 murders of Vancouver prostitutes
- Peter Woodcock - murdered 3 children in 1956 and 1957 and a fellow psychiatric institute patient in 1991
China
- Yang Xinhai - confessed to killing 65 individuals; executed in 2004
Colombia
- Luis Garavito - Admitted to killing and raping 140 boys (also killed victims in Ecuador)
- Pedro Lopez - aka The Monster of the Andes; apocryphal with 300 alleged victims (also killed victims in Ecuador)
Ecuador
- Daniel Barbosa - aka The Beast Of The Andes; apocryphal, with 71 alleged victims
France
- Michel Fourniret - confessed to 9 murders; allegedly killed 10 more
- Hélène Jegado - domestic servant who poisoned at least 23 people between 1833 and 1851; executed in 1852
- Henri Désiré Landru - killed 11 people; inspired the character of Monsieur Verdoux played by Charlie Chaplin
- Émile Louis - preyed on young handicapped women
- Marcel Petiot - doctor who killed 63 would-be refugees from the Nazis; executed in 1946
- Gilles de Rais - 15th century demonolator and child-killer
- Joseph Vacher - aka The French Ripper; 19th century serial killer of 11 individuals
Germany
- Jürgen Bartsch - killed 4, one escaped; died by wrongful overdose during castration surgery
- Karl Denke - cannibal; allegedly killed 30 people
- Karl Grossmann - killed women and sold their flesh on the black market
Ghana
- Charles Quansah - convicted of the strangulation deaths of 9 women in Accra, suspected of killing 34; sentenced to death in 2003
Hungary
- Erzsébet Báthory - countess who killed servant girls. Purported to have killed over 600.
- Béla Kiss - murdered at least 24 women; escaped justice in the confusion of World War I
- Sylvestre Matuschka - aka the Train Killer; derailed trains for sexual gratification
India
- Thug Behram - leader of a gang of Thugs in Avadh, India, who confessed to participating in 931 individual murders and to having personally strangled approximately 125 men
- Raman Raghav - killed street urchins and others in their sleep
- Auto Shankar - auto rickshaw driver who preyed on teenage girls
- Charles Sobhraj - preyed on Western tourists in Southeast Asia in the 1970s
Indonesia
- Ahmad Suradji - a serial killer who admitted to killing 42 women
Iran
- Mohammed Bijeh - aka the Tehran Desert Vampire; killed at least 16 young boys near Tehran, Iran; executed in 2005
- Said Hanai - aka The Spider Killer; killed at least 16 women around Mashhad, Iran; executed in 2002
Israel
- Nicolai Bonner - killed 4 people in 2005 in Haifa, Israel; most victims were homeless
Italy
- Luigi Chiatti - aka the Monster of Foligno; victims were children
- Leonarda Cianciulli - aka Soap-Maker of Correggio; murderess of 3 women
- Pietro Pacciani - aka the Monster of Florence; victims were young couples
- Roberto Succo - murdered at least five individuals, including his parents
Japan
- Tsutomu Miyazaki - aka The Otaku Murderer, The Little Girl Murderer, and Dracula; killed 4 preschool-age Japanese girls and ate two of them
Kazakhstan
- Nikolai Dzhumagaliev - aka Metal Fang; cannibal and rapist thought to have killed nearly 50 individuals
Latvia
- Kaspars Petrovs - convicted of murdering 13 elderly Riga women in 2005; confessed to killing 38
Mexico
- Juana Barraza Samperio - aka the Old Lady Killer; operated within the metropolitan area of Mexico City until January 25, 2006
- Adolfo de Jesus Constanzo - serial killer and cult leader in Mexico
- Delfina and Maria de Jesus Gonzales - killed a total of 91; arrested and sentenced in 1964
- Abdul Latif Sharif - Egyptian alleged to be responsible for dozens of murders in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico
Netherlands
- Lucia de Berk - nurse, convicted of killing at least 7 and attempting 3 murders in the 2000s
- Maria Swanenburg - killed 27 with arsenic in the 1880s
Norway
- Arnfinn Nesset - Geriatric assistant nurse who poisoned 22 dwellers at the institution "Orkdal alders - og sjukeheim" over a period of some years before being convicted in 1984
Pakistan
- Javed Iqbal - believed to have killed a hundred boys
Poland
- Julian Koltun - raped and murdered women in eastern Poland
- Zdzisław Marchwicki - allegedly killed 14; debate on whether he was the real serial killer
- Władysław Mazurkiewicz - aka The Gentleman Killer; killed up to 30 women
- Stanislaw Modzelewski - murdered 7 women in Łódź during the 1960s; executed in 1970
- Leszek Pękalski - killed up to 17 women
- Łucjan Staniak - aka The Red Spider and The Red Ripper; killed 6 to 20 women
Romania
- Ion Rîmaru - murdered and raped young women in Bucharest from 1970 to 1971; executed in 1971
Russia
- Andrei Chikatilo - aka The Rostov Ripper and Hannibal Lecter ; killed 52 women and children throughout the many countries of the former Soviet Union before being arrested, convicted, and executed in 1994
Slovenia
- Metod Trobec - raped and killed at least five women, committed suicide in prison in 2006
South Africa
- Daisy de Melker - poisoner; killed two husbands and one son; executed in 1932
- Cedric Maake - aka the Wemmer Pan Killer; murdered at least 27 people. Also serial rapist
- Moses Sithole - believed to have killed at least 38 young women
South Korea
- Yoo Young-Chul - killed and ate about 20 people, mainly rich elderly men and prostitutes
Sweden
- Thomas Quick - child molestor and alleged serial killer
UK
- Beverley Allitt - an Angel of Death; paediatric nurse who killed 4 patients and injured at least nine others, convicted in 1991
- Robert Black - Scottish schoolgirl killer; convicted of 3 murders, suspected of many more
- Ian Brady and Myra Hindley - aka Moors Murderers
- George Chapman - poisoned 3 women, also suspected of being Jack the Ripper
- John Childs - murdered 6 individuals; jailed 1980
- John Christie - aka The Necrophile who lived at 10 Rillington Place
- Mary Ann Cotton - British Victorian killer, said to have taken more than 20 victims
- Thomas Neill Cream - aka Lambeth Poisoner, began his killing spree in the US then moved to London
- Bruce George Peter Lee - aka the Hull Arsonist
- Kenneth Erskine - aka Stockwell Strangler; jailed in 1988 for murdering 7 pensioners
- John George Haigh - aka the Acid Bath Murderer and the Vampire of London
- Anthony Hardy - aka the Camden Ripper
- Colin Ireland - aka Gay Slayer
- Michael Lupo - aka Wolf Man; originally from Italy
- Patrick Mackay - confessed to killing 11 people
- Robert Mawdsley - aka Hannibal the Cannibal, killer of 4; killed 3 in prison
- Peter Moore - businessman who killed men at random in Wales
- Lenny Murphy - leader of the Shankill Butchers
- Dennis Nilsen - killer of 15 (possibly 16)
- William Palmer - aka The Rugeley Poisoner
- Mark Rowntree - 19 year old who killed 4 people at random
- Harold Shipman - doctor convicted of 15 murders; a later inquiry stated he had killed at least 215 and possibly up to 457 people over a 25 year period
- George Joseph Smith - aka The Brides in the Bath killer
- John Straffen - child-killer and Britain's longest serving prisoner
- Peter Sutcliffe - aka the Yorkshire Ripper
- Fred West and Rosemary West - aka House of Horrors murderers in Gloucester
- Graham Frederick Young - aka The Teacup Poisoner; killed 3 individuals from 1962 to 1971
Ukraine
- Anatoly Onoprienko - aka The Terminator; murdered 52 people from 1989 until his capture in 1996
USA
- Charles Albright - killer of 3; known for surgically removing the eyes of victims
- Richard Angelo - aka The Angel of Death; nurse
- Joe Ball - aka The Alligator Man, killed at least 20 women in the early 20th century in Texas
- Martha Jule Beck - with Raymond Martinez Fernandez aka "Honeymoon Killers," "Lonely Hearts Slayers," and eventually in the press simply "Hearts Killers" killed at least 3 women and one child in the 1940s.
- David Berkowitz - aka Son of Sam and The .44 Caliber Killer
- Bloody Benders - a family who killed guests of their inn in Labette County, Kansas, in 1872
- Robert 'Bob' Berdella - convicted of killing 6 men in 1988 in Kansas City, Missouri, undoubtedly killed others, sexually tortured and dismembered his victims
- Kenneth Bianchi - Californian who with his cousin Angelo Buono were the Hillside Stranglers
- William Bonin - aka The Freeway Killer; with several accomplices, claimed the lives of 20 boys in California
- Robert Charles Browne - Convicted of 2 murders in Colorado, but says he has killed 48, some of which have been corroborated.
- Jerry Brudos - aka The Shoe-Fetish Slayer, killed at least 5 women
- Ted Bundy - aka The Campus Killer or Lady Killer; law student who raped and murdered over 30 women in several states
- Angelo Buono, Jr. - Californian who with his cousin Kenneth Bianchi were the Hillside Stranglers
- Dean Carter - murdered at least 4 women
- Richard Chase - aka the Vampire of Sacramento murdered 6 people in the '70s
- Dean Corll - aka The Candy Man; committed the Houston Mass Murders with Elmer Wayne Henley and David Brooks
- Juan Corona - Mexican immigrant who killed 25 people in the space of just six weeks
- Charles Cullen - nurse in New Jersey and Pennsylvania who killed as many as 40 patients through lethal injection
- Jeffrey Dahmer - Milwaukee cannibal who kept heads, skulls and body parts in his apartment
- Albert DeSalvo - aka The Boston Strangler
- Westley Allan Dodd - child molester and killer of 3 young boys in Vancouver, Washington; hanged on January 5, 1993
- Nannie Doss - aka The Giggling Granny; serial poisoner who killed 4 husbands, 2 children, her 2 sisters, her mother, a grandson and a nephew.
- Mack Ray Edwards confessed to the murders of six children in Los Angeles County between 1953 and 1969.
- Raymond Martinez Fernandez killed at least one woman indepedently and convicted of killing 3 with Martha Jule Beck.
- Albert Fish - aka The Cannibal, The Moon Maniac and The Werewolf of Wisteria; sadist and pedophile who cannibalised several children
- Wayne Adam Ford - aka Wayward Wayne; confessed to murdering 4 women, believed to have killed others
- Joseph Paul Franklin - racist serial killer who targeted interracial couples and attempted to assassinate Larry Flint and Vernon Jordan
- John Wayne Gacy - aka the Killer Clown; killer of at least 33 men and boys who kept bodies buried under his Chicago home
- Donald Henry "Pee Wee" Gaskins - aka the Meanest Man in America; Gaskins, executed on September 6, 1991, confessed to over 200 murders, but due to inept police work, this number was never verified.
- Ed Gein - 2 known victims, 1 suspected victim, 4 missing persons; elements of Gein's life and crimes have inspired, at least in part Psycho, The Silence of the Lambs and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
- Kristen Gilbert - Angel of Death serial killer, convicted of killing 4 by injection of epinephrine while working as a nurse
- Harvey Murray Glatman - Californian rapist and killer of three women; lured women to pose for "bondage photographs" and would rape and murder them.
- Jeffrey Gorton - convicted of 2 rape-murders in Michigan, suspected of more
- Belle Gunness - murder-for-profit killer who murdered her suitors and her own children in Indiana.
- Robert Hansen - Alaskan baker who killed prostitutes at his cabin
- Donald Harvey - aka Angel of Death; hospital orderly, confessed to more than 80 "mercy killings" with 37 confirmed killings
- Gary M. Heidnik - serial killer from the Philadelphia area
- "Wild Bill" Hickman - killed in the name of religion (many of his alleged exploits are disputed)
- H. H. Holmes - active 1890-1894 during Chicago's 1893 World's Columbian Exposition
- Philip Carl Jablonski - killed at least 4 women in Utah
- Vincent Johnson - aka the Brooklyn Strangler; a homeless crack addict who killed at least 5 prostitutes
- Genene Jones - Texas pediatric nurse who poisoned infants in her care
- Patrick Kearney - necrophile who killed 28 men in California
- Edmund Kemper - started killing when he was aged fifteen in Santa Cruz, CA
- Sante Kimes - grifter and murder-for-profit killer who, along with her son Kenneth Kimes, is believed to have killed upwards of 4 people
- Paul John Knowles - raped and murdered 18 people
- Randy Steven Kraft - murdered as many as 68 young men in California
- Leonard Lake and Charles Ng - ex-marines and survivalists who collected female slaves
- Derrick Todd Lee - aka the Baton Rouge Serial Killer
- Eddie Leonski - aka the Brownout Strangler
- Henry Lee Lucas - confessed to hundreds of murders, although most confessions were false
- Charles Manson - most famous for his participation in the Tate-LaBianca murders of the late 1960s
- John Allen Muhammed - Washington D.C. area sniper
- Herbert Mullin - schizophrenic in Santa Cruz, CA who killed people to prevent earthquakes
- Earle Nelson - aka Gorilla Man; necrophiliac serial killer
- Carl Panzram - murderer, rapist, arsonist
- Jesse Pomeroy - teenaged psychopath who killed 2 children
- Dorothea Puente - killed and robbed 9 elderly boarders
- Dennis Rader - aka the BTK Killer; killed 10 people over 20 years
- Richard Ramirez - aka the Night Stalker; terrorized Los Angeles in 1984 and 1985
- Angel Maturino Resendiz - killed 9 people in Texas, Kentucky, and Illinois
- Gary Ridgway - aka The Green River Killer
- Joel Rifkin - murdered 17 women in the New York City and Long Island area
- John Edward Robinson - aka the Cyber Sex Killer; lured victims through the internet
- Danny Rolling - pleaded guilty to murdering 5 students in Florida
- Michael Ross - raped and murdered 7 women in Connecticut
- Efren Saldivar - respiratory therapist who killed 6 patients, and possibly as many as 120
- Gerard John Schaefer - aka The Killer Cop and The Florida Sex Beast; police officer who killed up to 34 women and girls
- Tommy Lynn Sells - admitted to murdering dozens of people from all over the USA, possibly in excess of 70
- Arthur Shawcross - aka the Genesee River Killer
- Lemuel Smith - confessed to the murders of 5 people, including that of an on-duty female prison-guard
- Morris Solomon Jr. - handyman killed 6 young women between 1986 and 1987 in a Sacramento, California, neighborhood
- Gerald Stano - convicted murderer of 41 women.
- Cary Stayner - aka the Yosemite Murderer who killed 4 women
- Michael Swango - physician and surgeon who poisoned over 30 of his patients and colleagues
- William Suff - aka the Riverside Killer who killed up to 19 women near Riverside, California
- Marybeth Tinning - poisoned 9 of her children
- Ottis Toole - Henry Lee Lucas's accomplice; convicted of 6 murders in Florida
- Chester Dwayne Turner - murderer of women in Los Angeles, California
- Henry Louis Wallace- Charlotte, North Carolina serial killer of at least 9 young women over a two year period from 1992 to 1994
- Coral Eugene Watts - aka The Sunday Morning Slasher; killed dozens of women in Texas and Michigan
- Wayne Williams - aka the Atlanta Child Murderer; convicted of two (and believed responsible for more) of the murders of over twenty children in Atlanta, Georgia
- Randall Woodfield - aka the I-5 Killer
- Aileen Wuornos - female serial killer who shot 6 men dead in Florida
- Robert Lee Yates - murdered at least 13 women in Spokane County, Washington
Unidentified serial killers
- The Axeman of New Orleans (USA)
- The Austin Axe Murderer, AKA the Servant Girl Annihilator (USA)
- Baseline Killer (USA)
- Bible John (UK)
- Claremont serial killer (Australia)
- The Cleveland Torso Murderer, AKA "The Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run" (USA)
- Jack the Ripper, the most famous serial killer of all, murdered prostitutes in the East End of London in 1888 (UK)
- Jack the Stripper (UK) 1964-65
- The Oakland County Child Killer
- The Original Night Stalker (USA)
- The Zodiac Killer (USA)
- The Stoneman (India) — An individual or gang that killed a number of homeless individuals through the 1980s.
- The Phantom Killer (USA)
- 2006 Ipswich murder investigation (UK) (unidentified killer, aka the "Ipswich Ripper" or "Suffolk Strangler") — Nobody yet convicted, but one man has been charged with five murders.
See also
- List of terrorist incidents (includes Unabomber, Theodore Kaczynski)
- Mass murderer
- List of criminals by nickname
- Spree killer