Disputed Cases
| Name | Country | Years active | Proven victims* | Possible victims | Miscellaneous information |
| Javed Iqbal | Pakistan | 1996 to 1999 | 74+ | 100+ | He raped, strangled and put acid in several children. Arrested, he claimed 100 victims. He was found guilty of 100 killings but 26 children were found alive after he hanged himself in prison. |
| Bruno Lüdke | Germany | 51 | 86 | Mentally disabled, Lüdke was arrested after being discovered with a corpse. Nazi police declared him insane and imprisoned him in a psychiatric hospital, where he was experimented on before being executed in 1944. The case remains controversial, as the only evidence tying him to the crimes was a confession that may have been physically coerced. | |
| Vera Renczi | Romania | 1920 to 1930 | 32 | 35 | Convicted of killing 35 men through arsenic poisoning but confessed to only killing 32 victims. |
| Gerald Stano | United States | 22+ | 41 | Confessed to killing 41 women in mostly Florida and New Jersey areas. Some controversy surrounds the case as he is believed by some to have been a serial confessor. | |
| H. H. Holmes | United States | 1886 | 27 | 200+ | Was one of the first documented American serial killers in the modern sense of the term. In Chicago, at the time of the 1893 World's Fair, Holmes opened a hotel which he had designed and built for himself specifically with murder in mind, and which was the location of many of his murders. |
| David Parker Ray | United States | 1950 to 1999 | 12 | 60 | Torture-murderer possibly aided by numerous accomplices, including his girlfriend. Targeted victims in the Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, area, convicted of killing 14 victims and suspected of 60 murders. . Known as the "Toybox Killer" for the mobile home he used as a house to rape, torture, and kill women. |
| Henry Lee Lucas | United States | 1960 to 1983 | 11 | 213 | Confessed to killing at least 600 people but later recanted and is suspected of lying about a majority of his murders. He originally offered a list of 77 women from 19 different states, as he confessed to more and more murders, the details became increasingly more bizarre. Some included dismemberment, necrophilia, even cannibalism. Lawmen linked the Lucas and Otis Toole to 81 murders alone. Convicted of 11 murders. Detectives from 40 states came to visit Lucas, and an estimated 3,000 homicides were discussed in what is considered to be one of the greatest mockeries of the U.S. legal system when police officers cleared their books of unsolved murders. The true number of murders committed by Lucas is unknown, but it is likely Lucas was not nearly as prolific a serial killer as he initially claimed to be, as most of his murder confessions were thoroughly discredited, and he himself claimed only one murder—that of his mother. Probably responsible for the deaths of 40 people. |
| Donald Henry Gaskins | United States | 1953 to 1982 | 9 | 31–80+ | Known as "The Meanest Man in America", he was convicted of nine murders in South Carolina taking place between 1969 and 1975. He was suspected of 31 murders. Killed three victims while incarcerated, one of which by using C-4. Later confessed on death row that he had murdered between 80 and 110 victims. Executed in 1991. |
| Tommy Lynn Sells | United States | 6 | 70? | A drifter active 1980–1999 throughout the U.S. who specialized in killing children and multiple victims after breaking into their homes. Caught when a 10-year-old girl survived his attack and provided a description of him. On death row in Texas. | |
| Robert Pickton | Canada | 1995 to 2001 | 6 | 26–49 | Found guilty of six counts of second-degree murder. Accused of murdering 20 other women, most of them prostitutes and drug dealers. Comments by Pickton suggest that the total may be 49. |
| Albert Fish | United States | 6 | 15–100 | Pedophile and cannibal. Connected to three murders; claimed to be responsible for many others. Electrocuted on January 16, 1936. | |
| Zodiac Killer | United States | 1962 to 1977 | 5 | 37 | Targeted young couples. Remains unsolved but open in the California jurisdictions the 5 certain Zodiac murders occurred. Potentially 37 total victims claimed but unverified. |
| Ottis Toole | United States | 4 | 8–125 | Convicted of three counts of murder, and confessed to four more murders before dying in prison. A sometime accomplice of convicted serial killer Henry Lee Lucas, Toole admitted to multiple counts of murder, rape, and cannibalism, and was the suspect in several unsolved murders. On December 16, 2008, police announced that they had identified Toole as the likely murderer of Adam Walsh, and would be closing the case as a result. | |
| Thomas Quick | Sweden | 3 | 30+ | Raped and murdered up to 30 men. Several scholars, however, have questioned if he killed anyone. Was convicted for 8 murders but, as of September 2012 he has be freed in 5 of those cases. | |
| John Bodkin Adams | United Kingdom | 0 | 163 | Acquitted in a highly unusual trial in 1957 of murder but later found guilty of fraud. Archive evidence shows that he was almost certainly a killer but that his prosecution was botched for political reasons. |
* Proven victims being victims the serial killer was tried for, explained by the killer in a detailed confession, or victims most scholars of the subject agree upon.
Read more about this topic: List Of Serial Killers By Number Of Victims
Famous quotes containing the word cases:
“There are few cases in which mere popularity should be considered a proper test of merit; but the case of song-writing is, I think, one of the few.”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1845)