By Chris Bartholomew
Pomona Strangler. Four dead women were discovered in 1993 that frequented the local hooker strip, Holt Avenue, and were probably picked up there by their killer. Three more dead women have surfaced in 1994 and 1995 that could be linked to this elusive killer.
East Area Rapist / Original Night Stalker. In 2001, an Orange County criminologist matched the DNA of a suspect in 10 Southern California murders committed between 1980 and 1986 with 50 rapes committed in Northern California from 1976 to 1979. This suspect was known by two monikers: The East Area Rapist and the Original Night Stalker. We are now calling him the Diamond Knot Killer. The identity of this rapist and killer remains unknown.
The Zodiac. Murdered five known victims in Benicia, Vallejo, Lake Berryessa, and San Francisco between December 1968 and October 1969. Four men and three women between the ages of 16 and 29 were targeted. Numerous suspects have been named by law enforcement and amateur investigators, but no conclusive evidence has surfaced.
The Black Dahlia Murder, Los Angeles, January 1947. Elizabeth Short, July 29, 1924 to about January 15, 1947, was the victim of a gruesome and much-publicized murder. Nicknamed the Black Dahlia, Short was found mutilated, with her body severed, on January 15, 1947 in Los Angeles. There were other people murdered around this time, and it is believed by some that she fell victim to a serial killer. She was tortured for three days before her body was found.
I-10 Serial Killer. Interstate 10, the 3,000-mile highway running across eight states in the lower United States. The 20 victims were mostly hitchhikers and prostitutes.
The Southside Slayer, Los Angeles, 1984 to 1987. Slashed before being strangled or stabbed to death and dumped like garbage in the streets. 20 victims.
San Diego Murders. Ten or more victims from 1985 to 1988. All victims found nude and strangled.
Sonoma County. Fifteen women had been murdered by the same person in and near Sonoma County from 1972 to 1975. The first victims credited to this elusive killer were 12-year-olds Maureen Strong and Yvonne Weber, abducted in Santa Rosa on February 4, 1972 and found nude out in the country on December 28. Each girl had one earring removed as a memento, a practice their killer could continue with future victims.
Denver Gay Slasher. In 1992 four men were stabbed to death by a possible serial killer who might have met them in Denver gay bars.
Coors Field Serial Murder. Denver is probably the home of a serial killer who preyed on homeless men during the fall of 1999. The first killings were discovered on September 7 when Donald Dyer and George Worth were found dead under a loading dock. The next day Melvin Washington was discovered bludgeoned and died later as a result of his injuries. Next, Milo Harris was recovered floating in the South Platte River on September 26 and Kenneth Rapp's corpse was located on October 22, though he and Harris had obviously been killed at a much earlier date. All five bodies were found in the general area of Coors Field and the short proximity in time between their deaths leaves little doubt that a serial killer stalks Denver's homeless. Boulder has at least two similar unsolved slayings of homeless men since Rapp's body was found, plus a 1997 case that could be connected. Denver authorities also fear that two beheaded males could be part of the same string of murders.
October 30, 2004. Denver police have reported that they are investigating the deaths of at least 5 homeless men killed so far this year, though they claim none are likely related to the murders of 1999.
Calendar Killer / Daytona Beach Killer. Slain four women in the past two years, luring them into his car and leaving their bodies in secluded areas. The first three victims were shot in 2005 and 2006.
Fort Myers Eight Killer. Detectives recovered a cache of bones from eight people in a wooded area of Fort Myers in 2007.
Suitcase Killer, 2000 to 2001. Kim Dietz-Livesey, 35, and Sia Demas, 21, bodies found stuffed into suitcases and left in plain sight along streets. On April 22, 2001 a fourth body was found in a suitcase in a north Miami-Dade canal by a group of boys rowing their boat. Officers at the scene said they could not identify the gender or ethnicity of the victim, although they believed it to be a female.
Miami Gay Serial Killer. Leonides Ramos, 51, and Osvaldo Fino Carballo, 39, both Cuban refugees living in Allapattah, were shot to death six days and six blocks apart.
Jack the Ripper. Atlanta was the scene of a grisly string of slayings just after the dawn of the twentieth century that drew horrifying comparisons to London's infamous Jack the Ripper. May 20, 1911 and the next six Saturday nights, a knife-wielding man took a victim, all black women. The victims were apparently choked into submission or unconsciousness, none were raped, and then had their throats slit before their murderer mutilated them sexually in a fashion similar to his London counterpart. In the next ten months he claimed thirteen more victims and then disappears forever.
Lovers Lane Murders, Atlanta. Three separate shootings of couples in parked cars happened during the year of 1977. He left three dead, and three injured.
Atlanta Lust Killer. Ten murders in fifteen years, the killings have been occurring since the Atlanta Child Murder investigation. The perpetrator hunts black prostitutes and theatrically stages their bodies at most crime scenes. The possible killer is believed to be responsible for more than ten deaths.
Atlanta Drag Queen Killer. From 1987 to 1992 six Atlanta men dressed in women's clothing have been shot to death by what authorities think might be a serial killer.
The Tylenol Murders. The Chicago Tylenol murders occurred when seven people died after taking pain-relief capsules which had been poisoned.
The Axeman of New Orleans. Killing twelve people, this killer was active in New Orleans from May 1918 to October 1919.
New Orleans Serial Killer. 24 dead. The victims are mostly prostitutes who were strangled, their stripped bodies dumped in New Orleans, Jefferson Parish, and swamps further west of the city. The killings started in 1991.
Cluster Killing in Rural Louisiana. On October 29, 1999, authorities in Louisiana announced that the deaths of eight black men found outside New Orleans could be the work of one or more serial killers. All the victims have been asphyxiated, and dumped in remote areas, and left shoeless.
The Springfield Strangler. Five women suffocated to death in Springfield over a four-month period.
New Bedford Highway Killer. From April to September of 1988 a serial murderer hunted New Bedford, dumping his victims alongside the highways outside of the city. The slain women consisted of prostitutes and drug addicts, the last of which was not found until April of 1989. Eleven women perished, two of which are still missing.
Ann Arbor Hospital Murders. In August 1975, FBI investigators confirmed that at least eight, possibly as many as forty, men had been murdered in the Veteran's Hospital in Ann Arbor. The cause of the deaths was believed to be the injection of a drug called Pavulon which resulted in respiratory arrest in the victims.
Oakland County Child Murders. Four or more children were murdered in Oakland County in 1976 and 1977. The killer was also nicknamed The Babysitter, as all four victims had been recently bathed.
Twin Cities Killer. From 1986 to 1994 up to 34 corpses have littered the streets of the Twin Cities. Most of them were prostitutes in their twenties and thirties. Several were mutilated, dismembered, and sometimes decapitated.
Missouri River Killer, also the Independence Avenue Killer. Ten women have been killed. All murdered women were alleged prostitutes working in the Independence Avenue area of Kansas City. They were all roughly of the same weight and height, and many had been warned of the possible threat to their lives posed by what police are ready to call a serial killer.
Murder in Albuquerque, 2009. The skeletal remains of 13 women found in the mesa.
Possible Serial Killer in New Mexico. Albuquerque killings have occurred since 1994 of five homosexual men in Albuquerque and a former county commissioner who was gay.
Serial Killer in Columbus, Mississippi. Targeted elderly.
Gay Serial Killer. From 1991 through 1994 NYPD has linked at least three murders in the New York metropolitan area, and believe as many as five may be the work of a serial killer stalking gay men.
The Alphabet Murders, also known as the double initial murders, took place in the early 1970s; three young girls were attacked sexually and strangled. The case got its name from the fact that each of the three girls' first and last names started with the same letters, Carmen Colon, Wanda Walkowicz, and Michelle Maenza, and that the bodies were found in towns that started with the same letter as the girls' names: Colon in Churchville, Walkowicz in Webster and Maenza in Macedon.
Newark, New Jersey. Fourteen women, many of them prostitutes, were stabbed, strangled or suffocated, and their bodies dumped in vacant lots or abandoned buildings a few miles from each other. The women were killed in different ways and disposed of in different places. In nearby Union County, there were four unsolved slayings of black female prostitutes killed between 1988 and 1994.
On April 26 the skeletons of two murdered women were found together in a wooded area behind a Mexican restaurant in the 3500 block of Carolina Beach Road. There are hopes that since the FBI definition of a serial killer went from three murders to just two, the police will investigate these murders as serial killings.
The Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run. The Cleveland Torso Murderer was an unidentified serial killer active in the Cleveland area in the 1930s. The official toll of the murders was 12.
Mad Killer of Cumminsville, May 4, 1904 to 1909. There were three murders in 1904, then a six year hiatus, and then in 1909 two more savage murders occurred.
Cincinnati Serial Killer. Since 1996 about a dozen female bodies have popped up throughout an eight to ten county area in Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana. The victims are similar in age and appearance.
The Frankford Slasher. Murdered women in the Frankford area of Philadelphia in 1985 to 1990.
Pittsburgh Serial Killer. Pittsburgh police announced there could be a serial killer in their city who claimed the life of more than a dozen prostitutes since the late 1980s.
Serial Killer in Rapid City. Eight homeless men have appeared drowned in a stream that runs through a park in Rapid City.
Ice Box Murders, Houston. Fred and Edwina Rodgers in Houston. This husband and wife were killed, dissected and placed in the kitchen ice box. The main suspect, their son Charles, was never found or definitively linked to the murders, and the case has remained unsolved for over 35 years.
The Phantom Murders, or Texarkana Moonlight Murders. Committed a number of murders in Texarkana between February 23 and May 4, 1946. The Phantom is also known as the Texarkana Phantom and the Moonlight Murderer, having often killed when the moon was full.
Servant Girl Annihilator, also the Austin Axe Murderer. Between 1884 and 1885 at least seven women, mostly servant girls, died at the hands of the killer, who typically dragged his victims from their beds and raped them before slashing or axing them to death. Several victims were stabbed by some sort of spike in the ears or the face.
Ax Murders, Louisiana and Texas. Forty nine people were murdered, each one viciously hacked to death with an ax while sleeping.
I-70 and I-35 Killer. Killed five women and a man in at least three Midwestern states, and three more women in Texas.
The I-45 Killer. 32 dead women in an area a few miles on either side of Interstate 45 along the 50-mile stretch between Houston and Galveston.
Vermont Serial Killer. From the late 1970s and in through the 1980s, at least ten women were stabbed to death.
The Norfolk and Hampton Roads Killer. Since the mid-eighties 12 homosexual men have been abducted in and around the Norfolk area and their bodies dumped in the Chesapeake and Portsmouth areas. Ten were strangled; the others were too decomposed to determine how they died. All but one was found nude.
Colonial Parkway Killer. Murdered at least eight people along the Colonial Parkway of Virginia between 1986 and 1989.
Lewiston Valley Killer. Five murders and disappearances in the Clarkston, Washington and Lewiston, Idaho area from 1979 to 1982. Some victims were dismembered and dumped in a river. Two bodies have never been found. Victims include three young women, a girl and a man.
Dismemberment Murders. Three murders in which the victims' bodies were dismembered and dumped in remote areas in Snohomish County. One victim was a Bulgarian organized crime figure whose body was found in 1987, but wasn't identified for 10 years. Another was a Korean immigrant from Bothell with a record for prostitution. Her body was found with the remains of a third man, who has never been identified, in 1991.
The Index Killer. Two Seattle women's bodies were dumped in the Index area in 1988. Both victims, known prostitutes and drug users, were stabbed. Three other women, two found dead nearby and a 14-year-old runaway last seen with one of the murder victims, may also be victims.
Northwest Serial Killer, 1985. The disappearances of 12 women and the slaying of 29 others in the counties of King, Pierce and Snohomish in Washington State are considered as the work of a possible serial killer.
Capital City Murders. Eight young women were killed. There are several similarities. The patterns are wooded areas, off the road in concealed areas. Each victim was young, wore her hair long and parted it in the same manner, and all of the victims were found within a short distance of Madison. In addition, they were all somehow associated with the University of Wisconsin either through classes, employment or living at a campus residence.
Washington D.C. Eight black women were murdered between 1986 and 1987.
Editor's note: this list was compiled in 2008 and most of it still stands, which is the point of it. One entry has been closed. The East Area Rapist and Original Night Stalker, called the Diamond Knot Killer here, was identified in 2018 through genetic genealogy as Joseph James DeAngelo, a former police officer, who pleaded guilty in June 2020 to thirteen counts of murder and thirteen of kidnapping and was sentenced to life without parole. Two figures given above have since been settled downward: the Albuquerque remains numbered eleven women and an unborn child rather than thirteen, and the Fort Myers remains were eight people rather than eight men, two of whom were identified. Everything else on this list remains unsolved, including the Zodiac, the Alphabet Murders, the Oakland County child murders, the Texarkana Phantom, the Frankford Slasher, the Cleveland torso murders and the Colonial Parkway killings.