The motives of the serial killers on this list vastly differ. Some of these serial killers are pedophiles and psychopaths who take their hatred out on young children. A few of the vicious killers on this list were also mothers who took the lives of their own children due to mental illness. Many serial killers of children work as nurses and other career paths where access to children is all too easy. The methods used include torture, mutilation, and sexual assault among other crimes against children.
Luis Alfredo Gravity Cubillos, also known as “La Bestia” or “Triblin,” is a Columbian rapist and child serial killer. Most of his victims were homeless boys between 8 to 16 years old. After gaining their trust, he took the children for a walk and when they got tired, he would molest and rape them, cut their throats, and usually dismember their bodies. Most bodies showed signs of prolonged torture.
His victims, based on maps that Garavito drew in prison, could eventually exceed 300 in numbers. He was arrested on April 22, 1999 and confessed to murdering 140 children. Garavito was charged with 172 altogether throughout Columbia.
Garavito was found guilty on 139 of the 172 murders. Columbian law limits imprisonment to 40 years. Because he helped police find some bodies, as well as confessing, it reduced his sentence to 22 years in prison.
Pedro Lopez may have raped and killed more than 300 young girls throughout South America. The killings took place between 1969 and 1980 when he was discovered and arrested. He was released in 1994, arrested again for another murder, released again in 1998, and arrested once again for murder in 2002.
Daniel Camargo Barbosa was a Columbian serial killer. He was raised by an abusive stepmother, who punished him and sometimes dressed him in girls’ clothing, making him a victim of ridicule in front of his peers.
Barbosa selected helpless, young, lower-case girls in search of work. He pretended hat he was a stranger to the area, and hinted at the possibility of the girls getting a job. Barbosa would then enter the woods, claiming to be looking for a short cut.
He raped his victims before strangling them, sometimes he hacked, slashed and crushed the girls with a machete. After his victims were dead, he left their bodies in the forest to be picked clean by scavengers.
His explanation for choosing children was he wanted virgins “because they cried. “ He killed because he wanted revenge on women’s unfaithfulness. Barbosa was arrested on February 26, 1986 only a few minutes after he had murdered a nine-year-old girl. He calmly confessed to killing 72 girls in Ecuador, and led authorities to the dumping grounds of those victims whose bodies had not yet been recovered.
Barbosa was convicted and sentenced to 16 years in prison, the maximum sentence available in Ecuador. It was reported that in November 1994, he was murdered in prison by Geovanny Noguera.
Andrei Romanovich Chikatilo was a Soviet serial killer, nicknamed the “Butcher of Rostov,” the “Red Ripper,” and the “Rostov Ripper.” He had a career as a teacher of Russian language and literature. His career ended in March 1981, following several complaints of child molestation against pupils of both sexes.
In September 1978, Chikatilo committed his first documented murder. He established a pattern of approaching children, runaways, and young vagrants at bus or railway stations, enticing them to a nearby forest or other secluded area, and killing them, usually by stabbing, slashing, and eviscerating the victim with a knife
Some victims, in addition to receiving a multitude of knife wounds, we’re also strangled or battered to death. Many of the victims’ bodies bore evidence of mutilation to the eye sockets. Pathologists concluded the injuries were caused by a knife, leading investigators to the conclusion the killer had gouged out the eyes of his victims. His child victims were of both sexes.
After the killing, Chikatilo would make efforts to conceal the body before leaving the crime scene. He was brought to trial and charged with 53 counts of murder in addition to five charges of sexual assault against minors committed when he had been a teacher.
Chikatilo was formally sentenced to death plus 18 years, and was taken from the court room to his cell to await execution. On February 14, 1994, he was taken from his death row cell to a soundproofed room in Novocherkassk Prison and executed with a single gunshot behind the right ear.
Ramadan Abdul Rehim Mansour, also known as “al-Tourbini,” is a street gang leader and serial killer who raped and murdered at least 32 children in the course of seven years, throughout several locations in Egypt. All of his victims were 10 to 14 years old, most of them boys.
Mansour and his gang members lured street children onto the carriage roof of trains, where they then raped and tortured them, and tossed them onto trackside, dead or barely alive. Some of the children were dumped into the Nile or buried alive.
After his arrest, Monson reportedly told prosecutors that he was possessed by a female jinn who commanded him to commit the crimes. Mansour, along with his accomplice Farag Samir Mahmoud, who was also known as “Hanata,” were convicted and sentenced to death by the criminal court in Tanta in 2007. Mansour was executed in 2010.
Miyuki Ishikawa was a Japanese midwife and serial killer who is believed to have murdered many infants with the aid of several accomplices throughout the 1940s. It is estimated that her victims numbered between 85 to 169, however the general estimate is 103.
She worked as a hospital director in the Kotobuki Maternity Hospital and was an experienced midwife. Ishikawa chose to neglect numerous infants, many of whom died as a direct result of this abuse.
She attempted to garner payment for these murders, along with her husband, Takeshi, claiming that it would be less than the actual expense of raising these unwanted children. Police found over 40 dead bodies in the house of a mortician, thirty corpses were later discovered in a temple.
The authorities viewed her homicides as a crime of omission. Ishikawa was originally sentenced to eight years in prison, and in 1952 the Tokyo High Court revoked it and sentenced her to four years in prison.
Robert Black is a Scottish serial killer. He kidnapped and murdered four girls between the ages of 5 and 11, between 1981 and 1986 in the United Kingdom. Black was convicted of sexually assaulting one of the girls and of raping the other three.
Black is also suspected of unsolved child murders in the UK dating back to 1969 and 1987. The nationwide hunt for Robert Black would prove to be one of the most exhaustive United Kingdom murder investigations of the 20th century.
On May 19, a jury found Black guilty of three counts of kidnapping, three counts of murder, three counts of preventing the lawful burial a body, and one count of attempted abduction. Upon each of these counts, he was sentenced to a term of life imprisonment, with a recommendation that he serve a minimum of 35 years on each of the three murder charges for which he was convicted.
Black suffered a fatal heart attack while incarcerated at HMP Maghaberry on January 12, 2016.
Beverley Gail Allitt is an English serial killer who killed four children, attempted to kill three other children, and caused grievous bodily harm to a further six children. Allitt was employed as a State Enrolled nurse at Grantham and Kesteven Hospital.
She administered large doses of insulin to at least two victims and a large bubble was found in the body of another, but police were unable to establish how all the attacks were carried out. Allitt had attacked thirteen children, four fatally, over a period of 59 days in the children’s ward of the hospital.
It was found that Allitt was the only nurse on duty for all the attacks on the children and she also had access to the drugs. She was charged with four counts of murder, 11 accounts of attempted murder and 11 counts of causing grievous bodily harm.
Allitt was found guilty on each charge and sentenced to 13 concurrent terms of life imprisonment, which she is serving at Rampton Secure Hospital in Nottinghamshire. The judge recommended she serve a minimum term of 30 years, meaning she would not be released until at least 2022 at the age of 54, and then only if she was no longer considered to be a danger to the public.
Abraao Jose Bueno is a Brazilian nurse and serial killer. He was working as a nurse when officials discovered that he was giving babies and children overdoses of sedatives causing them to stop breathing. Many of his victims were suffering from leukemia or AIDS.
Bueno attempted to resuscitate each child after giving the overdose. In the course of one month up to fifteen children are thought to have been targeted, all between the ages of one and ten. On May 15, 2008, Bueno was found guilty on four counts of murder and four counts of attempted murder. He was sentenced to 110 years total.
Anisio Ferreira de Sousa is a Brazilian doctor and serial killer who ran a satanic ring that killed boys in Altamira, Brazil. In total the deaths of 19 boys have been linked to the ring. The boys were sexually mutilated and murdered.
De Sousa was convicted of the murder of three boys and the attempted murder of two others. He was sentenced to 77 years in prison.
Dagmar Johanne Amalie Overbye was a Danish serial killer. Each of her victims were under her care, including her own child. She was working as a professional child caretaker caring for babies born out of wedlock.
Overbye strangled them, drowned them or burned them to death in her masonry heater. The corpses were either cremated, buried or hidden. She murdered between 9 and 25 children during a seven-year period from 1913 to 1920. She was convicted of 9 murders as there was no proof of the others.
On March 3, 1921, she was sentenced to death, which was later commuted to life in prison. Overbye died in prison on May 6, 1929, at age 42. She became one of three women sentenced to death in Denmark in the 20th century, but she—like the other two – was reprieved.
Marybeth Roe Tinning is an American prisoner and serial killer. She killed her nine children from 1972 to 1985. Even though each of her children died under different suspicious circumstances over the course of a decade, she wasn’t caught until her adopted child was found dead.
Laboratory testing indicated that the death of Tinning’s ninth child resulted from smothering. At that time, the deaths of her other children were investigated, but she was only charged in one child’s death.
After a six-week trial the jury found Tinning guilty of murder in the second-degree and depraved indifference to a human life. She received a sentence of 20 years to life in prison at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility for Women.
Andras Pandy was a convicted Belgian serial killer of Hungarian ancestry. He was also a teacher and Protestant pastor at the United Protestant Church in Belgium. Pandy was convicted for the murder of six family members in Brussels between 1986 and 1990.
The victims were his wife, ex-wife, two biological children, and two stepchildren who disappeared mysteriously, with the help of his daughter Agnes. He also started abusive incestuous relations with Agnes and a third stepchild who survived.
In November 1997, Agnes was arrested by police, and was solely responsible for the murder of her mother, and took part in four others. The murders were by a handgun, and head trauma caused by a sledgehammer.
The corpses were dismembered, partly dissolved in acid in the basement, and then remaining parts were taken to a local slaughterhouse for disposal. Pandy was also convicted of attempted murder and rape of three daughters.
He was sentenced to life imprisonment without parole and housed in Leuven Central Prison before he was moved to another prison due to health reasons. In 2007, when he was 80, prison authorities had considered rehousing him in a retirement home.
Agnes received a 21-year sentence for being an accomplice in five murders and one attempted murder. She died on December 23, 2013, from natural causes in the prison infirmary.
Anthony Kirkland is an American serial killer. He killed three children after being released from prison for murdering his girlfriend, and setting her body on fire. He pleaded guilty to manslaughter for her murder and served 16 years in prison. From December 22, 2006, till March 7, 2009, Kirkland murdered four females, three by strangulation.
He had burned the bodies in an attempt to conceal evidence of rape. After being convicted of aggravated murder, gross abuse of a corpse, attempted rape and aggravated robbery, the judge sentenced Kirkland to death. He presently awaits his sentence at Chillicothe Correctional Institution.
Harry Powers, also known as Cornelius O. Pierson, and A. R. Weaver, was a convicted serial killer. He earned notoriety when he killed two women and three children after finding his victims through Lonely Hearts ads.
Powers claimed he was looking for love, but he murdered them for their money. Love letters were found in the trunk of his automobile. He had written back to many women with the intentions of stealing their money and killing them.
Autopsies of his victims showed that the two girls and their mother were strangled to death, while the young boy’s head was beaten with a hammer. Another woman was uncovered with a belt wrapped around her neck, with which she was strangled.
Powers was sentenced to death by hanging. On March 18, 1932, Powers was walked to the scaffold at the Moundsville State Penitentiary to be hanged.
David Michael Krueger, best known by his birth name, Peter Woodcock, was a Canadian serial killer and child rapist who gained notoriety for the brutal murders of three young children in Toronto, Canada, when he himself was still a teenager.
He was placed in a psychiatric facility and diagnosed as a psychopath. Woodcock would often wander from his home by foot, bicycle, or trains, to parts of Toronto where he would molest dozens, and ultimately murder three children.
The first victim had his clothing removed and then been redressed. His face was pushed in the dirt and there were bite marks on his calf and buttocks, but no evidence of rape. Pennies were found scattered near the body, and the killer defecated next to the victim as well.
Woodcock strangled and beat to death victim number two, rupturing his liver. A bite mark was found on his throat and paper clips were scattered around the body. The third victim, a girl, was found with her clothes pulled off.
She had been choked unconscious, had fingers stuck into her eyes and her privates, and her death was caused by a tree branch being forcibly inserted into her privates. Woodcock was tried only for the girls’ murder.
After a four-day trial he was found not guilty by reason of insanity and was sent to the Oak Ridge division of the maximum-security Penetanguishene Mental Health Centre in Ontario. On his 71st birthday he died of natural causes.
Kathleen Megan Folbigg is an Australian child serial killer. She killed four children between 1991 and 1999. Three of the children were her own infants. Folbigg claimed that all of the children died of natural causes.
Her victims were eight-month-old Patrick Allen, 10-month-old Sarah Kathleen, 19-month-old Laura Elizabeth and 19-day-old Caleb Gibson. The murders came to an end when her husband discovered her personal diary which detailed the killings.
At Folbigg’s trial the defense pointed out that there were no direct admissions to the killings in her diary entries. They also pointed out no physical evidence could link her to murder. In May 2003, Folbigg was found guilty of three counts of murder, one count of manslaughter and one count of maliciously inflicting grievous bodily harm.
She was sentenced to 40 years imprisonment with a non-parole period of 30 years. In February 2007, the court reduced her sentence to 30 years imprisonment with a non-parole period of 25 years on appeal. Due to the nature of her crimes, Folbigg resides in protective custody to prevent possible violence by other inmates.
Cayetano Santos Godino, also known as “Petiso Orejudo,” was an Argentinian serial killer who terrorized Buenos Aires at the age of 16. He was responsible for the death of four children and the attempted murder of seven more in 1912, and the arson of seven buildings.
Of his victims, a 13-year-old was found dead in an abandoned house, and he set fire to the dress of a five-year-old who died from the burns. An 18-month-old was lured away by Godino and taken to a country house where he unsuccessfully tried to choke him with his belt. Godino cut the belt and used it to tie the child’s hands and feet. He found a nail and hammered into the side of the child’s skull and hid the corpse.
Godino entered a reformatory where he tried to kill some of the inmates. In 1923, he was transferred to Ushuala Penitentiary. Throughout 1933 he spent some time in the hospital for a beating he suffered from inmates after he killed two of their pet cats. From 1935 and onwards he was always sick and received no visitors until he died on November 15,1944, under strange circumstances.
Hamilton Howard “Albert ” Fish was an American serial killer. He was also known as the “Gray Man,” the “Werewolf of Wisteria,” the “Brooklyn Vampire,” the “Moon Maniac,” and the “Boogeyman. “ He was a child rapist and cannibal, boasting that he “had children in every state,” and at one time stated the number was about 100.
Fish chose either mentally handicapped or African Americans as his victims, assuming they would not be missed when killed. Fish tortured, mutilated, and murdered young children with his “implements of hell,” consisting of a meat clever, a butcher knife, and a small handsaw.
His trial lasted 10 days with Fish pleading insanity, claiming to have heard voices from God telling him to kill children. None of the jurors doubted that Fish was insane, but they felt he should be executed anyway.
They found him to be sane and guilty, and the judge ordered the death sentence. Fish was executed on January 16, 1936, in the electric chair at Sing Sing. He was buried in the Sing Sing cemetery.
Peter Kudzinowski was a Polish-born American serial killer who committed his crimes in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. He had killed one adult and two children. Kudzinowski murdered a seven-year-old boy by knocking him down, hitting him several times, and slashing his throat.
He covered the body with the boy’s overcoat and left him. The other child victim was a five-year-old girl who was at a school picnic when she was murdered by strangulation. Kudzinowski was captured, confessed, and was brought to Jersey City for a trial.
He was found guilty of first-degree murder and was sentenced to death at the New Jersey State Prison. Kudzinowski was executed by electric chair on December 21, 1929 in Trenton, New Jersey.
This is a list of just a few child murderers. There is no more heinous crime than the murder of a young child. It’s all the more despicable to hear of serial killers who have not only taken the lives of multiple children, but also ensured that their final moments alive were torturous ones. Serial killers who focus their horrific crimes on children are often considered the highest level of evil.
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