1950s-2000s (decade)
| Date | Name | Deaths | Location | Summary |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1963–1965 | The Moors Murders | 5+ | Oldham, Lancashire, England | Five children were killed in the area of Greater Manchester over a two-year period by serial killers Ian Brady and Myra Hindley. After being turned in by Hindley's brother-in-law David Smith, the two were convicted of murder with Brady sentenced to life imprisonment before being committed to a mental health institution, while Hindley remained in prison until her death in 2002. |
| 1969 | The Bible John Murders | 3(?) | Glasgow, Scotland | Three women are found to have been strangled between 1968 and 1969 by an unidentified serial killer known only as Bible John. Although police investigated the murders for over twenty years, the murderer was later identified as Peter Tobin on 4 May 2007. |
| 1973–1978 | The Robert Maudsley case (Hannibal the Cannibal) |
4 | Robert John Maudsley was a British serial killer responsible for the murders of four people. He committed three of these murders in prison after receiving a life sentence for a single murder. He was falsely alleged to have eaten part of the brain of one of three men he killed in prison, which earned him the nickname "Hannibal the Cannibal" among the British press. | |
| 1975–1981 | The Peter Sutcliffe Murders (Yorkshire Ripper) |
13-20+ | Yorkshire, England | Peter Sutcliffe, known to the press as the "Yorkshire Ripper", murdered seven women in West Yorkshire, as well as up to thirteen others in northern England until his arrest in 1981. Sentenced to life imprisonment, he was imprisoned at Parkhurst Prison until his transfer to Broadmoor Hospital after he was violently assaulted by another inmate. |
| 1978–1981 | The Dennis Nilsen murders | 15+ | London | Dennis Nilsen murdered several men over a period of five years, including foreign students as well as local homeless men and male prostitutes, who were lured to his apartment and strangled before being dismembered. |
| 1982–1986 | The Robert Black murders | 3(?) | Scotland & North of England |
Robert Black is a Scottish serial killer and child molester. He kidnapped, raped and murdered three girls during the 1980s, kidnapped a fourth girl who survived, attempted to kidnap a fifth, and is the suspect in a number of unsolved child murders dating back to 1969 and the 1970s throughout Europe. On December 16, 2009, Black was charged with the murder of Jennifer Cardy, a 9 year old girl whose body was found at McKee's Dam near Hillsborough, County Down in August 1981. |
| 1991–2006 | The Peter Tobin case | 3 known | Margate, Kent | Prior to his first murder conviction, Tobin served ten years in prison for a double rape committed in 1993, following which he was released in 2004. In 2007 he was sentenced to life with a minimum of 21 years for the rape and murder of Angelika Kluk in Glasgow in 2006. Skeletal remains of two further young women who went missing in 1991 were subsequently found at his former home in Margate. Tobin was convicted of the murder of Vicky Hamilton in December 2008, when his minimum sentence was increased to 30 years, and of the murder of Dinah McNicol in December 2009. He is now being investigated for other unsolved cases of murder dating back to the 1960s. |
| 1991 | The Beverley Allitt murders (The Angel of Death) |
4 dead & 9 attempted murders | Beverley Gail Allitt, dubbed by the media the Angel of Death, is an English serial killer who murdered four children and injured nine others while working as a State Enrolled Nurse (SEN), on the children's ward of Grantham and Kesteven Hospital, Lincolnshire. Her main method of murder was to inject the child with potassium chloride (to cause cardiac arrest), or with insulin (to induce lethal hypoglycemia). She was sentenced to life imprisonment at her trial at Nottingham Crown Court in 1993 and is currently being held at Rampton Secure Hospital. | |
| 1994 | Fred and Rosemary West case (The Wests House of Horrors) |
12(+?) | Gloucester, England | Between April 1973 and September 1979, Fred and Rosemary West would lure young women into their home where they were sexually assaulted and murdered. In February 1994 they were arrested and dead bodies were found in the garden and under the house at their Gloucester home. It is speculated that the pair murdered other girls between 1980 and 1992, but their only known victim after 1980 was their 16-year-old daughter, Heather, who was murdered in 1987 by Fred West, who hanged himself whilst awaiting trial at Winson Green Prison on New Year's Day 1995. On November 22, 1995, Rosemary West was sentenced to life imprisonment. |
| 1998 | The Harold Shipman murders (Doctor Death) |
250+ | Hyde, Tameside, England | Over a period of three decades, Dr. Harold Shipman murdered approximately 250 elderly women in the area of Hyde, Greater Manchester until his arrest in 1998 after he attempted to forge a new will in the name of one of his victims. Facing 15 consecutive life sentences, he later committed suicide while in custody at Wakefield Prison in 2004. |
Read more about this topic: Major Crimes In The United Kingdom, List of Crimes, Serial Killings