In the US there have been at least 500 known serial killers. Of that select group,16% were adopted. The number of adopted children who have turned to murder is astounding, leading some psychologists to believe that some of the feelings that come with being adopted can lead to murderous thoughts. In fact, adopted men and women are 15 times more likely to kill their parents.
Aileen Carol Wuornos was an American serial killer who killed seven men in Florida between 1989 and 1990. Wuornos claimed that her victims had either raped or attempted to rape her while she was working as a prostitute, and that all of the homicides were committed in self-defense. She was convicted and sentenced to death for six of the murders and was executed by the state of Florida by lethal injection on October 9, 2002.
Wuornos was born Aileen Carol Pittman in Rochester, Michigan, on February 29, 1956. Her mother, Diane Wuornos was 14-years-old when she married Aileen’s father, Leo Dale Pittman on June 3, 1954. Less than two years, and two months before Aileen was born, Diane filed for divorce. Aileen’s older brother was born on March 14, 1955.
Wuornos never met her father; he was incarcerated at the time of her birth. Pittman was diagnosed with schizophrenia, later convicted of sex crimes against children , and eventually hanged himself in prison January 30, 1969. In January 1960, when Wuornos was almost 4-years-old, Diane abandoned her children, leaving them with their maternal grandparents, Laura and Britta Wuornos, who legally adopted Aileen and Keith on March 18, 1960.
Joel David Rifkin is an American serial killer convicted of the murders of 9 women, mostly drug addicted prostitutes, between 1989 and 1993 in New York City. Also, he is suspected by some to be responsible for some of the Long Island Prostitute Murders whose remains were found in March and April 2011, as four of his victims were never found.
Rifkin’s birth mother was a 20-year-old college student, and his birth father was a 24-year-old college student and army veteran. He was adopted by Benjamin Rifkin, who was of Russian Jewish decent, and his wife, Jeanne (Granelles), of Spanish decent who converted to Judaism when she married.
The Rifkin family did not have a synagogue affiliation; Joel considered himself to be agnostic, having never had a bar mitzvah. The Rifkin’s adopted Joel on February 14, 1959, when he was three weeks old. The couple adopted another child, a daughter, three years later.
Theodore Robert “Ted” Bundy was an American serial killer, kidnapper, rapist, and necrophiliac who assaulted and murdered numerous women and girls during the 1970s and possibly earlier. Shortly before his execution, after more than a decade of denials, he confessed to 30 homicides, committed in 7 states between 1974 and 1978.
The true victim count remains unknown, and could be much higher. He died in the electric chair at Raiford Prison in Starke, Florida on January 24, 1989.
Bundy was born Theodore Robert Cowell at the Elizabeth Lund Home for Unwed Mothers (now the Lund Family Center) in Burlington, Vermont, on November 24, 1946, to Eleanor Louise Cowell (1924-2012; known for most of her life as Louise).
His father’s identity has never been determined with certainty. His birth certificate assigns paternity to a salesman and Air Force veteran named Lloyd Marshall, but Louise later claimed that she had been seduced by “a sailor” whose name may have been Jack Worthington.
Years later, investigators would find no record of anyone by that name in Navy or Merchant Marine archives. Some family members expressed suspicions that Bundy might have been fathered by Louise’s own violent abusive father, Samuel Cowell.
For the first three years of his life Bundy lived in the Philadelphia home of his maternal grandparents, Samuel and Eleanor Cowell, who raised him as their son to avoid the social stigma that accompanied birth outside wedlock at the time.
Family, friends and even young Ted were told that his mother was his older sister. Eventually he discovered the truth, he told his girlfriend that a cousin showed him a copy of his birth certificate after calling him a ”bastard,” but he told biographers Steven Michaud and Hugh Aynesworth that he located his birth record in Vermont in 1969.
In 1950, Louise abruptly changed her surname from Cowell to Nelson, and at the urging of multiple family members, left Philadelphia with her son to live with her cousins in Tacoma, Washington. In 1951, Louise met Johnny Culpepper Bundy. They married later that year and Johnny formally adopted Ted.
Kenneth Alessio Bianchi is an American serial killer, kidnapper, and rapist, Bianchi and his cousin Angelo Buano, Jr., together are known as the “Hillside Stranglers.” He is serving life imprisonment in Washington. Bianchi is also a suspect in the “Alphabet Murders,” four unsolved murders in his home city of Rochester, New York.
Bianchi was born in Rochester, New York, to a prostitute who gave him up for adoption two weeks after he was born. He was adopted at three months old by Francis Scioliono and her husband Nicholas Bianchi in Rochester.
Richard Benjamin Speck was an American mass murderer who systematically tortured, raped, and murdered eight student nurses from South Chicago Community Hospital on July 14, 1966. He was sentenced to death, but that sentence was later overturned due to issues with jury selection at his trial. Speck died of a heart attack after 25 years in prison.
Richard Benjamin Speck was born in the village of Kirkwood, Illinois, the seventh of eight children of Benjamin Franklin Speck and Mary Margaret Carbaugh Speck. The family moved to Monmouth, Illinois, shortly after Speck’s birth.
Speck was very close to his father, who died in 1947 from a heart attack. Speck was 6-years-old at the time. Speck’s mother married Carl August Rudolf Linberg, whom she met on a train trip to Chicago. Speck’s mother and stepfather had separated.
Speck had stopped using the name Richard Franklin Linberg when he got married and began using the name Richard Franklin Speck.
Joseph Kallinger was an American serial killer who murdered three people and tortured four families. He committed these crimes with his 13-year-old son Michael.
Kallinger was born Joseph Lee Brenner III at the Northern Liberties Hospital in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to Joseph Lee Brenner, Jr., and his wife Judith. In December 1937, the child was placed in a foster home after his father abandoned his mother.
October 15, 1939 he was adopted by Stephen and Anna Kallinger. He was abused by both his adoptive parents so severely that at age six, he suffered a hernia inflicted by his adoptive father. The punishments Kallinger endured included kneeling on jagged rocks, being locked inside closets, consuming excrement, committing self-injury, being burned with irons, being whipped with belts, and being starved. When he was nine, he was sexually assaulted by a group of neighborhood boys.
Lawrence Sigmund Bittaker and Roy Lewis Norris are American serial killers and rapists known as the “Tool Box Killers,” who together committed the kidnap, rape, torture, and murder of five teenage girls over a period of five months in southern California in 1979.
Bittaker was sentenced to death for five murders and is currently on death row at San Quentin State Prison. Norris accepted a plea bargain, he agreed to testify against Bittaker and was sentenced to life imprisonment with possibility of parole after serving 30 years. He is currently incarcerated at Donovan State Prison.
They became known as the “Tool Box Killers” due to the fact the majority of instruments used to torture and murder their victims were items normally stored inside a household toolbox.
Lawrence Sigmund Bittaker was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on September 27, 1940, the unwanted child of a couple who had chosen not to have children. Upon his birth, Bittaker was placed in an orphanage by his natural mother, but was adopted by a Mr. and Mrs. George Bittaker as an infant.
Bittaker’s adoptive father worked in aircraft factories which required the family to frequently move around the United States throughout his childhood.
Roy Lewis Norris was born in Greeley, Colorado, on February 2, 1948. Norris was conceived outside of wedlock; his parents had married to avoid the social stigma surrounding illegitimate birth at the time. Although he occasionally lived with his parents throughout his childhood and adolescents, Norris was repeatedly placed in the care of foster families within the state of Colorado.
Sometimes known as “The Eyeball Killer,” Charles Albright killed at least 3 women in 1991. He was sentenced to life in prison. Albright is known to have an abnormal obsession with eyes, going so far as to remove the eyes from dolls and photographs. In all three murders the eyes were surgically removed.
Charles Albright was adopted by Delle and Fred Albright, from an orphan’s home. His mother, a school teacher, was very strict and over protective of Charles. She accelerated his education, helping him skip two grades.
Jane Toppan was an American serial killer. She confessed to 31 murders in 1901. She us quoted as saying that her ambition was “to have killed more people ---- than any other man or woman who ever lived . . .”
Jane Toppan was born Honora Kelley in 1857. It is known that her parents were Irish immigrants, and her mother, Bridget Kelley, died of tuberculosis when she was very young. Her father, Peter Kelley, was well known as an alcoholic and the source of many local rumors concerning his supposed insanity.
In 1863, only a few years after his wife’s death, Kelley brought his two youngest children, the 8-year-old Delia Josephine and 6-year-old Honora, to the Boston Female Asylum, an orphanage for indigent female children.
Kelley surrendered the two young girls, never to see them again. In less than two years, in November 1864, Honora Kelley was placed as an indentured servant in the home of Mrs. Anne Toppan of Lowell, Massachusetts. Though never formally adopted by the Toppans , Honora took on the surname of her benefactors and eventually became known as Jane.
Thomas Hamilton killed 17 people after bringing four handguns into a school. Sixteen of the victims were children. He then killed himself.
Thomas Watt Hamilton was born on May 10, 1952, in Glasgow, Scotland. His mother, a hotel chambermaid, was divorced from his father by the time Hamilton was born. Hamilton never knew his father and grew up with his mother’s adoptive parents, believing that they were his biological parents.
They legally adopted him at age 2. He also thought his biological mother was his sister until he was told the truth when he was 22-years-old.
Steven Catlin killed his fourth and fifth wives as well as his adoptive mother by poisoning them in order to collect insurance money. He was sentenced to death in 1990.
Steven David Catlin was adopted as an infant, during 1944, by Glenn and Martha Catlin of Kern County, California. Steven moved to Bakersfield with his new parents in the early 1950s. Dropping out of high school, he showed no interest in honest work and was arrested on forgery charges at age 19, serving 9 months in a California Youth Authority Camp.
Eric Payne raped and murdered two women in 1997 by beating them to death with a hammer. He was executed by lethal injection in 1999.
Eric Payne was born Eric Hollie, in Roanoke, Virginia, on January 7, 1973, when he was only four months old, Eric’s father killed Eric’s mother and then killed himself. Rather than just taking in her nephew, Erica’s aunt thought she needed to adopt him.
His aunt then kept him as her ‘son’ for only six years. For the next two years he went through a series of institutions and foster homes. At the age of 8, Eric was adopted by Gerald Payne and his wife. But the Payne’s simply decided they didn’t want to be his ‘parents’ when he was 14-years-old because of his lying and failure to respond to $70,000 worth of counseling. The next four years Eric moved from foster care to juvenile prisons.
Gerald Eugene Stano was an American serial killer. He killed at least 22 women, and confessed to killing 41.
Gerald was born in Schenectady, New York. His given name at birth was Paul Zeininger. His natural mother neglected him to such an extent that when she finally gave him up for adoption, when he was six months old, county doctors declared him unadoptable because he was functioning at what they described as “an animalistic level,” even ingesting his own feces to survive.
He was eventually adopted, however, by Norma Stano a nurse who renamed him Gerald Eugene Stano.
Juergen Bartsch is a German serial killer who killed 4 young boys. He was caught in 1966 and was sentenced to life in prison. He died when a nurse accidentally gave him too much Halothane.
Born out of wedlock in post-war Germany, Juergen Bartsch lost his mother at the tender age of five months. He was adopted after spending 11 months in a founding home, but the selection of a new family was unfortunate.
Enrolled in a parochial school, Bartsch was seduced by a homosexual priest who also delighted in filling his mind with sadistic stories from medieval times. Back in his adopted home, Juergen was alternately treated with contempt and extravagant attention.
His “mother” insisted on bathing him through adolescents and beyond, a practice she continued to the date of his arrest on murder charges.
Robert Otis Coulson killed his adoptive parents, Otis and Mary, and siblings by placing plastic bags over their heads before lighting their house on fire. It is believed that he committed the murders in order to claim insurance money.
Coulson and his siblings were adopted in Texas. Coulson’s natural father wrote to the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles asking that his son be spared from execution. He also told of the “guilt” he felt over the years for allowing his children to be put up for adoption, blaming Texas for “pushing him to do so.”
Con artist Sandra Bridewell was born on April 14, 1944, and was adopted into a family in Sedalia, Missouri. Known as the “Black Widow,” Bridewell collected hundreds of thousands of dollars from her lovers and friends, and was suspected of being connected to several mysterious deaths.
Sandra Camile Bridewell was adopted as an infant by Arthur and Camile Powers. At the age of three, Sandra’s adoptive mother was killed in an auto accident. Her father eventually remarried and relocated his family to Oak Cliff, Texas.
Learning to adjust to her stepmother Doris was hard. The two fought regularly, and Sandra claimed that her stepmother regularly locked her in a closet, refused to send out birthday party invitations and enjoyed telling her that nobody wanted her.
This is just so short list of adopted killers, but what a list it is. These individuals were tossed around, confused, abused, and unwanted or a burden to their natural parents. Unfortunately in some of these cases it makes sense as to why they turned evil. We may never really know if adoption molded them into killers or if a nurturing , loving biological upbringing would have prevented these deep-seated resentments of a life turned upside down.
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