Nannie Doss (born 4 November 1905 – 2 June 1965) was a serial killer responsible for the deaths of eleven people between the 1920s and 1954. She finally confessed to the murders in October 1954, when her fifth husband had died in a small hospital in Tulsa, Oklahoma. In all, it was revealed that she had killed four husbands, two children, her two sisters, her mother, a grandson and a nephew. She has been given the monikers "The Giggling Granny" and "The Jolly Black Widow".

Margie Velma Barfield (October 29, 1932 – November 2, 1984) was a 53-year old grandmother, killed 7 husbands, fiances, several individuals she was a caretaker for and her own mother in Lumberton, North Carolina. She burned some victims to death while they slept (made to look like smoking in bed), arranged prescription drug overdoses for others, and resorted to arsenic made to look like gastroenteritis for others. She was executed by lethal injection in 1984, the first woman to be executed in the U.S. since 1976.

Faye Copeland (1921 - 28 December 2004) and her husband Ray were the oldest couple ever sentenced to death in the United States at the age of 69 and 75, respectively. Faye was the oldest woman on death row, until her sentence was commuted to life in prison in 1999.

Their modus operandi was to hire unskilled drifters as farm hands, involve them in a scheme to buy cows at auction with fraudulent checks, and then kill them.

Number of victims: 5 confirmed; suspected to be as high as 12

Miyuki Ishikawa (Born 1897 - Died ?) was a Japanese midwife who is believed to have murdered at least 103 infants with the aid of several accomplices throughout the 1940s. When she was finally apprehended, the sentence she received was remarkably light, considering that Miyuki's actions resulted in a death toll so high that it remains unrivalled by any other serial killer in Japan.

Number of victims: 103-169

Tillie Klimek (or Tillie Gburek) (1876 - 1936) was an American serial killer. She poisoned all five of her husbands: respectively, John Mitkiewicz, John Ruskowski, Frank Kupszcyk, Joseph Guszkowski, and Anton Klimek. She also poisoned three neighborhood children and others. She became known as a fortune-teller, for predicting their deaths in advance.

Rosemary and her husband Fred West, were accused of murdering 10 women and young girls over a 16 year period ending in 1987. They enjoyed luring away vulnerable runaways with offers of rides, lodging or jobs as nannies. Once in their clutches inside their "House of Horrors", the young women were stripped, bound with tape, raped, tortured, then killed, dismembered and buried. The killer couple was arrested at their lethal homestead, 25 Cromwell Street, Gloucester, England in 1994. Police, armed with a search warrant, dug up the remains of their 16 year old daughter, Heather, who vanished in 1987. Further excavations under the house and in garden produced eight more female bodies, including Rosemary's stepdaughter, Charmaine.

Countess Elizabeth Báthory (August 7, 1560 – August 21, 1614), was a Hungarian countess from the renowned Báthory family. The family is famous for defending Hungary against the Ottoman Turks. She is known as the most infamous serial killer in Central European history and is remembered as the "Blood Countess" and as Bloody Lady of ?achtice, after the castle near Tren?ín, in Royal Hungary, present-day Slovakia, where she spent most of her life.

After her husband's death, she and four collaborators were accused of torturing and killing hundreds of girls and young women, with one witness attributing to them over 600 victims. In 1610, she was imprisoned in ?achtice Castle, where she remained in her room bricked in until her death four years later. Since she was a Countess she was never formally tried in court. The Báthory case has inspired many legends, including the false story of the countess bathing in the blood of virginal girls whom she killed in order to retain her youth. Like Wallachia's (now Romania) Vlad ?epes the Impaler, who inspired the creation of Dracula, these stories have led to the modern nicknames of the Blood Countess and Countess Dracula.

Judias Buenoano, who at this writing sits on death row in Texas, masqueraded under various pseudonyms for years while she went about killing a couple of husbands, a fiancée and a son for their loot.

Jane Toppan (born Nora Kelly 1854 - 1938) confessed to 31 murders in 1901 and was declared insane and institutionalized until her death in 1938. It is believed that she murdered between 70 and 100 individuals during her reign of terror between the ages of 26-47. Her method of murder was lethal injections of morphine.

Toppan explained her motive (A classic Angel of Death who was insane)this way: "That is my ambition, to have killed more people- more helpless people- than any man or woman who has ever lived".

When apprehended, she said she wanted to kill more people than anyone who has ever lived before, but could only provide details to solve 31 crimes. Her history of suicide attempts helped her win an insanity plea, and she was eventually confined to a state mental hospital for 40 years until she died in custody.

Belle Gunness (1896-1908) aka "Lady Bluebeard" was the first 20th Century Black Widow. She was never brought to justice. On a farm outside of Chicago, she killed 49 people, including multiple husbands, ranch workers, and children who were put up with her thru adoption agencies. Most of the people died from poisoning, diagnosed as acute colitis, although many others met with freak accidents on the farm. Toward the end, she collaborated in an arson cover-up with one of the ranch workers who was also set up as the patsy while she faked her own death via a headless female corpse on the grounds. Police found the head some years later, determined it was not her's, and conducted an unsuccessful manhunt until 1935. The patsy died in prison, innocent of any crime other than the arson he participated in.