David Berkowitz, better known as Son of Sam, is an infamous 1970s New York City serial killer who killed six people and wounded several others. His crimes became legendary because of the bizzarre content in the letters that he wrote to the police and the media and his reasons for commiting the attacks. With the police feeling the pressure to catch the killer, "Operation Omega" was formed, which was comprised of over 200 detectives – all working on finding the Son of Sam before he killed again.
Berkowitz was eventually caught after receiving a parking ticket at the time and near the place of the Moskowitz murder. That evidence along with letters he wrote to Carr and the Cassaras, his military background, his appearance, and an arson incident, led police to his door. When he was arrested he immediately surrendered to police and identified himself as Sam. After being evaluated, it was determined that he could stand trial. He pled not guilty and received a 365-year sentence.

Berkowitz's Crime Spree:

July 29, 1976 – Jody Valenti and Donna Lauria were shot as they sat talking in a parked car outside Donna’s apartment. Lauria died instantly from a gunshot wound to her neck. Valenti survived the attack.

October 23, 1976 – Carl Denaro and Rosemary Keenan were shot while sitting in Denaro’s parked car. Both survived, but Carl was struck in the head by one of the bullets.

November 26, 1976 – Donna DeMasi and 18-year-old Joanne Lomino were walking near Joanne’s home after a late movie. Berkowitz followed them briefly, then shot them. Donna survived without suffering permanent physical harm, but Joanne was paralyzed for life.

January 30, 1977 – 26-year-old Christine Freund and her fiance John Diel were shot as they sat in a parked car. Christine died and John Diel survived the attack.

March 8, 1977 – Virginia Voskerichian, a Barnard College honor student was shot and killed while walking home from class.

April 17, 1977 – 18-year-old Valentina Suriani and her 20-year-old boyfriend Alexander Esau, were both shot twice. Both died as a result of gunshot wounds. Berkowitz left a letter at the scene, signed “Son of Sam.”

June 26, 1977 – Judy Placido and Sal Lupu were shot while leaving a disco. Both survived although Judy was shot three times.

July 31, 1977 – Bobby Violante and Stacy Moskowitz were shot in the car while parked at a lover’s lane. Stacy died from a gunshot wound to her head and Bobby lost vision in one eye and partial vision in the other eye.

In 1978, on a four day murder spree, Richard Chase shot and slashed six people between January and Febuary. He broke into the victims homes, slaughtered the victims, who included a pregnant woman and a two year old child.

When Richard Chase was arrested for the horrible crimes committed, people who knew him should not have been surprised. He was known to drink the blood of animals, including cats and dogs, and even ate live birds.

Once arrested, he confessed to the killings and confessed to drinking the blood of his victims, and to carrying pieces of the victims with him to gnaw on when he so desired. Chase was sentenced to life in prison for the murders. On December 26, 1980, a prison guard found Chase dead in his cell. Coroners determined Chase had committed suicide by overdosing on his medication, possibly taking three weeks worth of medication at once, killing himself.

Ramirez’ reign of terror left the people of Los Angeles in a state of constant fear. 1985 was one of the hottest for many years, yet a crazed killer was entering homes after dark. Because of this, the tabloids named him the Night Stalker. People were scared to leave a window open despite the blistering heat. Sales of guns and dogs rocketed.

Between May and August 1985, Ramirez killed, raped and robbed at an alarming rate. Many serial killers prey on one set of people. The Yorkshire Ripper attacked mainly prostitutes, Jeffrey Dahmer’s victims were men - but Richard Ramirez attacked males and females of many races with ages ranging from a 16-year-old girl to an elderly couple. But one similarity in many of his killings was scrawling black magic symbols such as pentagrams at the crime scenes.

Ramirez was unlike any of the serial killers which had previously been studied. He was hard to categorise because many of his crimes were so different in nature and he varied his methods many times. Because of these variations, it took police detectives a long time to realise they had a serial killer at large.

He was eventually caught by the mass of angry people and beaten. Ironically, his life was saved by the police who arrived just in time. While he was held in a cell at Hollenbeck police station, a lynch mob of more than 600 gathered outside, calling for his hanging.

At the end of his trial in September 1989, Ramirez was convicted of 13 murders, 5 attempted murders, 11 sexual assaults and 14 burglaries.

Between 1975 and 1984 Sutcliffe was known as the "Yorkshire Ripper" as he terrorized prostitutes around Northern England with his hammer and other instruments of torture.

A former mortuary worker, Sutcliffe apparently spoke with God frequently. The good Lord ordered him to go out and hunt prostitutes and, as a true Christian, he did as he was told. Luckily, he also enjoyed the job and would cum in his pants as he hammered and stabbed his victims to death.

Police were frustrated with numerous false confessions they received during their search for him. On January 2, 1981, Sutcliffe was finally caught sitting in a car with a prostitute. While in custody he confessed everything. The ripper is also suspected of having killed and maimed several other women in France and Sweden during his travels abroad.

Good Samaritan Hospital in West Islip was the setting for the case of Richard Angelo, a 26-year-old nurse who came to be known as the Angel of Death. Angelo was tried in 1989 for the deaths of seven patients in the hospital in the fall of 1987. The deaths came from injections of the paralyzing drug Pavulon. He was convicted of murder in two of the deaths and lesser charges for others. The motive: a feeling of inadequacy. "I wanted to create a situation where I would cause the patient to have some respiratory distress or some problem and through my intervention or suggested intervention or whatever, come out looking like I knew what I was doing," he said during a videotaped confession shown at his trial. "I had no confidence in myself. I felt very inadequate." It was enough to send him to prison for at least 50 years.

On December 2, 1979, New York City firemen responded to an alarm at a seedy hotel on West 42nd Street, not far from Times Square. They fought their way through smoky corridors to quench a blaze inside one room, discovering two women's bodies there. Stretched out on separate beds, the headless corpses also had their hands removed, legs doused with lighter fluid and set on fire. The missing parts were never found, but X-rays identified one victim as 22-year-old Deedeh Goodarzi, a Kuwaiti immigrant who earned her living as a prostitute. Goodarzi's young companion in death was never identified. The crime reminded homicide detectives of another unsolved case. Teenage hooker Helen Sikes had disappeared from Times Square in January, turning up in Queens, her throat slashed so deeply that she was nearly decapitated. Her severed legs were found a block away, laid side-by-side in ritual fashion, as if still attached to the body.

In May 1981, Cottingham was convicted on fifteen felony counts related to the murder of Jane Doe, drawing a sentence of 173 to 197 years in prison. A year later, conviction on second-degree murder charges in the death of Maryann Carr added another sentence of 20 years to life. In 1984, convicted on three counts of second-degree murder, involving Times Square prostitutes, Cottingham earned a final sentence of 75 years to life.

As the one of the oldest known Serial Killers Elizabeth Bathory is the Team Captain. Elected by the other team members not just for her nobility, but her cruelty.

About the year 1610, the castle of Csejta was the residence of Elizabeth Bathory, sister to the King of Poland, and wife of a rich and powerful magnate. Like most ladies of her day, she was surrounded by a troop of young persons, generally the daughters of poor but noble parents, who lived in honourable servitude, in return for which their education was cared for, and their dowry secured. Elizabeth was of a severe and cruel disposition, and her handmaidens led no joyous life. Slight faults are said to have been punished by most merciless tortures. One day, as the lady of Csejta was adoring at her mirror those charms which that faithful monitor told her were fast waning, she gave way to her ungovernable temper, excited, perhaps, by the mirror's unwelcome hint, and struck her unoffending maid with such force in the face as to draw blood. As she washed from her hand the stain, she fancied that the part which the blood had touched grew whiter, softer, and as it were, more young. Imbued with the dreams of the age, she believed that accident had revealed to her what so many philosophers had wasted years to discover, -- that in a maiden's blood she possessed the elixir vitae, the source of never failing youth and beauty! Remorseless by nature, she and now urged by that worst of woman's weaknesses, vanity, no sooner did the thought flash across her brain than her resolution was taken; the life of her luckless handmaiden seemed as nought compared with the rich boon her murder promised to secure.
Elizabeth, however, was wary as she was cruel. At the foot of the rock on which Csejta stands, was a small cottage inhabited by two old women, and between the cellar of this cottage and the castle was a subterranean passage, known only to one or two persons, and never used but in times of danger. With the aid of these crones and her steward, the poor girl was led through the secret passage to the cottage, where the horrid deed was accomplished, and the body of the murderess washed in virgin's blood! Not satisfied with the first essay, at different intervals, by the aid of these accomplices and the secret passage, no less than three hundred maidens were sacrificed at the shrine of vanity and superstition. Several years had been occupied in this pitiless slaughter, and no suspicion of the truth was excited, though the greatest amazement pervaded the country at the disappearance of so many persons.
At last, however, Elizabeth called into play against her, two passions stronger even than vanity or cunning -- love and revenge became interested in the discovery of the mystery. Among the victims of Csejta was a beautiful maiden who was beloved by and betrothed to a young man of the neighbourhood. In despair at the loss of his mistress, he followed her traces with such perseverance, that, in spite of the hitherto successful caution of the murderess, he penetrated the bloody secrets of the castle, and burning for revenge, flew to Presburg, boldly accused Elizabeth Bathory of murder before the Palatine, in open court, and demanded judgment against her.
So grave an accusation, so openly preferred against an individual of such high rank, demanded the most serious attention, and George Thurzo, the then Palatine, undertook to investigate the affair in person. Proceeding immediately to Csejta, before the murderess of her accomplices had any idea of the accusation, he discovered the still warm body of a young girl whom they had been destroying as the Palatine approached, and had not had time to dispose of before he apprehended them. The rank of Elizabeth mitigated her punishment to imprisonment for life, but her assistants were burned at the stake

Thirteen women were strangled in Boston, USA, between June 1962 and January 1964. The killer, moved by uncontrollable sexual desires, plausibly talked his way into the confidence of women living alone. Once admitted to their homes, he raped and strangled his victims. His hallmark was to tie the ligature around their necks with a characteristic bow under the chin.

His first victim was 55-year-old divorcee Anna Slesers, who was found by her son in June 1962. Her naked body, with legs spread wide, was sprawled on the floor of her apartment. She had been sexually assaulted, and strangled with her housecoat cord. In some of the murders an attempt had been made at robbery, but police believed this was a blind - the killer’s motive was plainly sex with murder.

As murder followed murder public tension mounted, and Boston’s women exiled themselves behind locked doors. Many sexual deviants were questioned and, as is usual, many false confessions made. Then in January 1964 the spate of murders stopped, but on 27 October the strangler struck again and attacked a young woman in her home, having gained entrance by pretending to be a detective. He pinned her down on the bed and threatened her with a knife - ‘Not a sound or I’ll kill you,’ he told her. After tying her hand and foot and molesting her, he inexplicably made off, simply saying, ‘I’m sorry.’

When she freed herself the girl immediately called the police and gave a full description. He was identified at once as Albert DeSalvo, who had been released from prison in April 1962 following conviction for indecent assault. DeSalvo was interviewed at Cambridge, Mass., and although denying involvement in the murders did admit to housebreaking and rape. When his photograph was published scores of reports came to the police from women, alleging DeSalvo had assaulted them.

DeSalvo was committed to Boston State Hospital, having been judged schizophrenic and not competent to stand trial. There was still no conclusive evidence that he was the Boston Strangler, but while in hospital he confessed to killing thirteen women, and described details of both the victims and their apartments. He described how he killed a 23-year-old graduate student: ‘Once I stabbed her once, I couldn’t stop…I keep hitting her and hitting her with that knife…she keeps bleeding from the throat…I hit her and hit her and hit her…’

Ironically, DeSalvo was never charged with being the Strangler. Instead he was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1967 for sex offences and robberies committed before the crimes.

On 26 November 1973 he was found dead in his prison cell at Walpole State Prison, Massachusetts, stabbed through the heart.

Ed Gein was born in 1906. Following the death of his alcoholic father in 1940, Gein worked on the family farm with his brother Henry; both lived with their mother. She was a domineering woman who kept a tight emotoinal grip on her sons. Ma Gein instilled in her boys a belief in the supposed evils of women and the sins of the flesh. She kept her boys pure, seeing that they worked God's land and brought forth it's fruits without becoming befouled by the opposite sex.

Worry about her sons and farming their land pushed the family's stress factor to the breaking point. Son Henry exhausted himself fighting a fire one day and died. Mrs Gein suffered a severe stroke in 1944, and died of a second more serious attack in December 1945.

Ed Gein, then 39, was left alone. Ed withdrew from reality. His mind developed strange fantasies. He became a voracious reader of anatomical texts, and developed a new interest in women. Then, without explanation, he seeled off all of the farmhouse except for his bedroom and kitchen.

Alone and independent, Gein began to pursue a new vocation: grave robbing. He began exhuming the bodies of women buried in the remote areas of graveyards. Covered by the darkness, Gein dug up the corpses and dragged them to his farm. There, in a shed, Gein drew and quartered his prized trophies as if they were slaughterhouse cattle. Portions of the quartered corpses were often cooked and eaten.

In early November 1957, Gein visited the Worden hardware store in Plainfield. The store was owned by Bernice Worden and her son, Frank. Gein often talked to Frank about hunting. The deer season was starting and Gein was curious about Frank's hunting plans. When Frank said that he would go hunting on Saturday morning, November 16, Gein told frank that he'd stop by the store that same day to buy some anti-freeze. When Frank returned to the store late Saturday, he was surprised to find the door locked. Inside, he dicovered a pool of blood on the floor. Alarmed by his mother's unexplained absence, he looked closer and found a sales slip in her handwriting made out to Gein for some anti-freeze. Frank called the sheriff to report his mother missing, and suggested that Gein be contacted immediately.

He was found at the home of Bob and Irene Hill, a friendly couple who often invited the quiet farmer to dinner. They had finished eating, and Ed was sitting in his car by the time the two officers arrived. Officer Dan Chase, asked Ed Gein several questions; Gein's answers indicated that he knew Bernice Wardon was dead. The officers truly believed that Gein was involved, so arrested him. Meanwhile two more officers drove to Gein's farm. Inside the woodshed, they found Bernice Wordon. Her body had been butchered like a deer. Bernice's severed head, found nearby, showed that she had been killed by a gunshot.

An expanded search uncovered nine masks of human skin. One proved to be the remains of Mary Hogan, a saloon keeper who had disappeared nearly three years before. The lawmen also found that Gein had used parts of his female victims to decorate the house, sculls on the bedposts, a chair made of skin, bowls made from skull-caps, a shade-pull with a pair of woman's lips attached, nine vulvas in a shoe-box, the grisly list went on. The investigators determined that 15 women had ended up as souvenirs in Gein's house of horrors.

In December 1957, the court found Gein criminally insane, and sent him to Wisconsin's Central State Hospital for the insane. Based on an expert conclusion ten years later that Gein should stand trial and defend himself, a petition was made for his release from the hospital. On January 16, 1968, the proceedings began before judge Robert Gollmar. Gollmar ruled that Gein suffered from mental disease and that he should be returned to the Central State Hospital.

Ed Gein died on 26 July 1984 of natural causes in the geriatric ward of the Mendota Mental Health Institute, where he had been cared for since 1978.