Serial Killers

November 5, 2003

by David Lohr

Richard Ramirez's random and inexplicable murder spree began on June 28, 1984, in Glassel Park, Calif., a small suburban community in Los Angeles. He parked his car down the street and quietly made his way up to a two-story apartment building. His eyes began scanning the area looking for an easy target. A heat wave was moving through the area, so he had little trouble finding an apartment with an open window. The open window he chose belonged to 79-year-old Jennie Vincow.

August 20, 2003

by David Lohr

On the Sunday morning of July 14, 1966, residents on South Chicago's East 100^th Street were suddenly awakened by a woman's screams. As local residents ran outside, they were shocked to notice a young woman standing on the second story ledge of a small townhouse unit. According to George Carpozi's 1967 book, The Chicago Nurse Murders, the young woman, Corazon Piezo Amurao, began shouting: "Help me! Help me! Everyone is dead … Oh God … he's killed them all!" she cried out.

by David Lohr

Mention the term "serial killer" and Ted Bundy's name is frequently the first to pop into mind. Before he was executed in 1989, he admitted to murdering 40 young women in almost a dozen states during his four-year reign of terror in the mid-'70s. In the process he became one of the most feared and prolific serial killers in U.S. history. But what sets Bundy apart is how different he was from the stereotype of the homicidal madman: He was so mainstream that the Washington State Republican Party hired him, so cunning that he twice escaped from jail, so dashing a figure that women sent marriage proposals to him on death row.

The Henry Louis Wallace Murders

by Jason Lapeyre

When he was arrested on Feb. 4, 1994, in Charlotte, N.C., Henry Louis Wallace had already raped and strangled to death five young black women. Each of his victims worked in the fast-food industry, and more significantly, each knew Wallace and was a friend of his girlfriend. Wallace's name appeared in the address books of several of the deceased. At the time of his arrest, Wallace had a burglary record, a prior charge of raping a woman at gunpoint, and connection to all five murder victims. Unfortunately for Wallace's next four murder victims, all this meant nothing to the Charlotte-Mecklenburg police and the prosecutor's office, which released Wallace from custody that same day.

Wallace had not, after all, been arrested for murder. He had been arrested for allegedly shoplifting at a mall.

The site of Gacy's home in Des Plaines, Ill., where Gacy buried the bodies of 28 of the known 33 teenage boys he murdered. (Gacy's home on this site was leveled by the authorities following the discovery of the mass graves beneath it.)

by David Lohr

Not many people who knew him would have suspected that John Wayne Gacy, a respected member of the Junior Chamber of Commerce in Des Plaines, Ill., a performing clown at neighborhood children's parties, a precinct captain in the local Democratic party, and the owner of his own contracting business would come to be known as one of the most prolific serial killers in U.S. history.

by David Lohr

In the early morning hours of August 7, 1987, serial-killer Dayton Leroy Rogers picked up his last prostitute victim, 26-year-old Jenny Smith. He drove her into the parking lot of a small business complex in Clackamas County, a small suburb of Portland, Ore.

Rogers was known by prostitutes for his odd behavior and bondage fetishes; it probably came as no surprise to Smith when he asked her to remove her clothes and bound her hands with a restraint fashioned from a shoe lace. He then began to cut her back and breasts with a knife. Smith screamed in horror. Rogers then shoved the knife into her vagina and began to stab her uncontrollably. Suddenly, the restraint gave way and Smith fell out onto the pavement. Bleeding profusely from her wounds, she tried to escape. Rogers quickly got out of the truck and grabbed her by the neck. He threw her to the ground and continued to stab her over and over.

by Bonnie Bobit

For several years during the mid-1980s, Henry Lee Lucas enjoyed holding the title of "the most infamous man on death row." His fleeting fame did not evolve from the three cold-blooded murders he did commit, but from hundreds of murders he did not. When Lucas was sentenced to death in 1984, it wasn't for the 1960 murder of his mother. Nor was it for the 1982 cold-blooded rape and murder of Kate Rich, an 82-year-old Texas woman. And it wasn't even for the 1982 murder and dismemberment of Becky Powell, his longtime girlfriend. Instead, Lucas was sent to death row for the 1979 rape and murder of a woman known only as "Orange Socks" – a woman he probably never met.