Thirteen men and women in this archive were arrested, held, and died before any court heard the case. Twelve of the thirteen died in a cell. What they are recorded as having done was never tested in evidence, and the victim counts this archive carries for them come from somewhere other than a verdict.
That is the part worth stating plainly, because it is easy to miss behind the manner of the deaths. A number attached to a name usually means a court found it. For these thirteen it means a police file, a press estimate, or the account the accused gave before dying.
## Where the numbers actually come from
Vladimir Kondratenko was arrested in Kiev in 1997 and died in police custody on May 31 the same year from an overdose of prescription medication, recorded officially as suicide. Sixteen killings are attributed to him. The roster's own entry says those sixteen were attributed administratively rather than proved.
Vladmir Romanov was arrested in the Kaliningrad Region in 2006 and hanged himself with a bed sheet in a detention centre on October 11 that year. Eleven killings are attributed to him. There was no trial, no testimony and no judgment, and his entry records no established victim count at all.
Felicitas Sanchez Aguillon was processed in Mexico City on April 26, 1941 on charges of abortion and illegal burial, and died on June 16 before any trial. The press of the period attributed forty to fifty deaths to her. None was established.
Hubert Pilcik was charged in Czechoslovakia in 1951 with five murders alongside rape, fraud and assisting illegal border crossings. He died in his cell at Bory prison in Pilsen on September 9, three days after his arrest, recorded as suicide. Five are described as proved; none was tried to verdict.
In those four cases there is nothing judicial behind the figure at all. In the nine that follow there is a charge, and in some a confession, but still no finding.
## Charged, and never answered
Fred West was charged with twelve murders in Gloucestershire and confessed and retracted repeatedly. He hanged himself in his cell at Winson Green in Birmingham on January 1, 1995, before any trial. The archive records eleven to thirteen or more.
Stephen Akinmurele was charged with five murders in Blackpool and remanded. He hanged himself at Manchester prison on August 28, 1999, weeks before his trial, so there was no verdict.
Thierry Paulin was arrested in Paris on December 1, 1987 after a woman he attacked survived and identified him. He died at the Fresnes prison hospital on April 16, 1989, aged twenty-five, before any trial. Eighteen to twenty-one deaths are attributed to him.
Maury Travis hanged himself in a St Louis county jail on June 10, 2002, shortly after his arrest. Twelve to seventeen are attributed.
David Meirhofer hanged himself in jail in Montana on September 29, 1974. Four are attributed. He had been interviewed and cleared on a polygraph earlier in the same investigation.
Volker Eckert killed himself in his cell in Bayreuth on July 2, 2007. The range attributed to him runs from six to nineteen, across France, Spain and Germany.
Itzcoatl Ocampo killed himself in the Orange County jail on November 27, 2013. His entry states it directly: he was never tried, and the six deaths were never tested in evidence.
Miyoko Sumida was arrested in Japan in 2011 and hanged herself at the Hyogo detention centre on December 12, 2012. Six are attributed. Nothing against her was tested and there is no judgment.
Israel Keyes was arrested on March 13, 2012 in Lufkin, Texas and killed himself at the Anchorage Correctional Complex on December 2 the same year. Three murders are confirmed and eleven were claimed. He died before identifying eight of the eleven he had described.
## What the thirteen have in common
Keyes is the case that shows the shape of the problem most clearly, because the gap is inside his own account rather than between his account and a court's. Eight of the eleven he described were never identified by anyone. The eleven exists because he said it, and he is the only person who could have completed it.
Read together, these thirteen entries are a record of what the archive holds when the ordinary machinery for establishing a number never runs. In eleven of the thirteen the accused ended the case themselves, which means the figure was fixed by whoever was left holding the file. That is not the same kind of fact as a conviction, and this archive does not present it as one.