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Most Unusual, Really!
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Unusual items from around the world!
Over the course of just one year between 1984 and 1985, Richard Ramirez had the cities of San Francisco and Los Angeles in a near constant state of fear. Ramirez, dubbed "The Night Stalker", was an avowed Satanist when he began burglarizing homes and raping and killing his victims. He used a variety of weapons to carry out his twisted crimes, ranging from handguns and hammers to machetes. It wasn't until he fled a convenience store after seeing his face on a newspaper that he was eventually captured in 1985. He died while still on death row in 2013.
Tiago Gomes da Rocha carried out an estimated 39 murders in his native Brazil between 2011 and 2014. He would ride up to one of his victims on a motorbike, shoot them, and speed off. They were like gangland killings, except that his targets were people he'd never met. Most were either homeless or members of the homosexual community. In the end, he was convicted for 11 of his alleged 39 murders, and was only given a 25-year sentence for his crimes.
Russian serial killer Sergey Golovkin raped and murdered 11 young boys between 1986 and 1992. Golovkin would kidnap his victims at knifepoint and drag them into the woods before committing his savagery. Mere murder, though, got dull. Golovkin, wanting to prolong their suffering, turned his basement workshop into a dungeon. There, he could torture his victims for as long as he wanted before allowing them to die. Finally, in 1996, after his capture, he became the last person in Russia to be executed before capital punishment was abolished.
The "Beast of Ukraine," Anatoly Onoprienko confessed to killing 52 people between just 1989 and 1996. And unlike most serial killers, Onoprienko didn't wait until his victims were alone. On multiple occasions, he executed entire families at once. But Onoprienko was finally stopped by police in 1996. He died in prison of heart failure in 2013.
Alexander Pichushkin was dubbed "The Chessboard Killer" for his love of the game, but his real hobby was something far more sinister. By the time he was caught in 2006, Pichushkin had already killed at least 48 people in his native Russia, but he'd planned on killing more. His goal, he confessed, was to get 64 kills: one for each space on the chessboard.
"The Green River Killer," Gary Ridgway, committed at least 71 murders in Washington state in the 1980s and '90s. Like many serial killers, Ridgway targeted sex workers, hitchhikers, and runaways, all of which he would strangle and then dump in the woods or the Green River. Police finally caught Ridgway in 2001 (years after Ted Bundy had helped authorities profile the suspect), at which point he was sentenced to life in prison.
Jeffrey Dahmer the "Milwaukee Cannibal" murdered 17 people between 1978 and 1991, most of them gay, black men. He would dismember his victims, eat their flesh, and molest their corpses. In some cases, he would try to "zombify" his victims by drilling holes into their head and pouring in hydrochloric acid. Even other killers were disgusted by him. In 1994, Dahmer was murdered in prison by another inmate.
In 1918, Fritz Haarmann "The Vampire of Hanover" embarked on a series of 27 savage murders in Germany. He cannibalized his victims, who were mostly young boys, by biting into their throats. And if the rumors are to be believed, he may even have sold some of their flesh on the black market as mincemeat. It took until 1924 before Haarmann was finally brought to justice and executed by guillotine.
One of the most infamous serial killers in history, Ted Bundy has been linked to more than 30 murders and rapes committed across the U.S. in the 1960s and '70s. And Bundy didn't stop when his victims were dead — he liked to decapitate them and have sex with their remains. This grisly murderer eluded law enforcement for years, even escaping a Colorado jail and going on to kill again. But finally, in 1978, a captured Bundy was sentenced to death.
Known as Russia’s “Red Ripper,” Andrei Chikatilo murdered up to 56 women and children between 1978 and 1990. Often, he would gouge his victim's eyes out, convinced that his image would be left on the eyes of the dead. Ultimately, he was caught and executed in 1994.
In the remote Alaska wilderness, Robert Hansen kidnapped and murdered at least 17 women in the 1970s and '80s. Inspired by the short story "The Most Dangerous Game," Hansen released his victims into the wilderness and hunted them. Hansen was eventually apprehended in 1983. He spent the rest of his life in an Alaskan prison, where he died in 2014.
Richard Speck left a nation in terror in 1966 when he murdered eight nursing students in a single night. Speck already had a lengthy criminal record of robbery, rape, and murder when he broke into the Chicago townhouse where the nursing students were living. He tied up and stabbed or strangled eight of the women before fleeing at dawn. Speck spent the rest of his life in prison before dying on the eve of his 50th birthday in 1991.
John Wayne Gacy is known as "The Killer Clown" for his hobby of painting clowns and performing at birthday parties as Pogo the Clown. Gacy is believed to have lured as many as 33 teenage boys and young men into his suburban Illinois home in the 1970s. With his clueless wife in the other room, he sexually assaulted them, strangled them to death, and buried their bodies in the crawl space under his house before he was caught and finally executed in 1994.
The "Monster of the Andes," Pedro López was convicted of killing 110 girls, but some criminologists believe he may have killed as many as 300. López traveled between Columbia, Peru, and Ecuador throughout the 1970s, picking up and murdering his victims. López claims that, at his peak, he was killing up to three people a week. But the most disturbing part of this story is the aftermath. In 1998, López was released from his psychiatric unit for "good behavior." His whereabouts are currently unknown.
Even for a serial killer, Richard Chase is disturbing. Dubbed "The Vampire of Sacramento," Chase killed six people in California in the 1970s — but he didn't stop there. After they'd died, he defiled their bodies, drank their blood, and ate their internal organs. Ultimately, Chase was caught and killed himself in prison in 1980.
By the time he was 18, Pedro Rodrigues Filho had already committed 10 murders in his native Brazil. He was just getting started, though — he would kill at least 61 more before he was arrested in 1973. But Filho lived by a code: He only went after criminals and those who had wronged him. That included his own father — when Filho found out his father had killed his mother, he cut out his heart and ate it.
Rodney James Alcala was a lady-killer — literally. The outwardly charming Alcala landed a spot on The Dating Game in 1978 while in the middle of his murderous reign, later earning him the nickname "The Dating Game Killer." Alcala was eventually given the death sentence by the state of California for the murder of five people. The killer himself, though, says that number is low. He claims that he raped, tortured, and murdered well over 100 victims.
Edmund Kemper's murders began in 1964 when, at 15, he killed his own grandparents, saying he "just wanted to see what it felt like to kill Grandma." Released after just six years, Kemper rained terror on California, raping, murdering, and desecrating the corpses of eight women, the second-to-last of which was his own mother, who he bludgeoned with a claw hammer before defiling her severed head. He then confessed and remains in prison to this day.
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