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KILLER COUNTDOWN

In The Frighteners Johnny Bartlett wanted to be the most prolific serial killer ever, well he's got a long way to go if he wants to gain that title.  In fact he's only at number 13 in the charts, one up from Gacy. In true chart fashion I give you all of the psycho's that Barlett had to beat in acending order of kills.

#12 RICHARD 'ICEMAN' KUKLINSKI-   40+ murders
Kuklinski started out by ambushing and beating to death another kid who bullied him, and discovered he enjoyed killing - he blew a mans head off over a bet and sliced up another one open to see how long it took him to bleed to death.  A motorist who cut him up was run off the road and beaten to death.  He was arrested in 1983 in an undercover cocaine-dealing operation; it wasn't until later the police realised he planned to kill the undercover cop and take the money and drugs.  In custody, he claimed most of his kills were hit jobs done to support his family.  Kuklinski got life and is now in a maximum security cell in New Jersey.

 

#11 GERALD STANO-  41 murders
Stano was a straightforward woman hater.  between 1969 and 1978 he killed 41 'bitches' in florida, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, but unusually didn't sexually assualt any of them.  "He thinks about three things: stereo systems, cars and killing women," one of the investigating officers explained.  Florida fired him in 1983.

 

#10 AHMAD SURADJI-  42 murders
Place: North Sumatra    Date: 1997    Victims: Women

Suradji was in Indonesian witch doctor who buried his victims near his house, with the hekp of his three wives.  He had a reputation for paranormal powers and preyed on women who secretly asked hm to cast spells on their husbands or families.  He charged each one $200 - 400, then buried them up to the waist in a nearby sugercane plantation as part of the ritual.  He'd then strangle them with cable, strip them and drink their saliva.  Arrested in 1997, he told police he needed to kill 70 women to get magical powers.  Although only 40 bodies were found, over 80 women are still missing in the area.

 

#9 ANATOLY ONOPRIENKO-  52 murders
Place: Ukraine    Date: 1995 - 1996    Victims: Families in remote houses
When the police finally arrested Anatoly Onoprienko on 16 April, 1996, the mentally disturbed former forestry student denied he was 'The Terminator', slayer of over 52 people and the Ukraine's most prolific killer, although he did cop to eight deaths between 1989 and 1995.  When he was taken into custody he had a 12-bor shotgun matching the one used in over 40 of the killings, and jewellry and video players belonging to some of the victims.  His modus operandi was to find families in isolated houses and shoot them at close range, torching the houses afterwards and blasting anyone who was unlucky enough to witness his violent outbursts.  During a three month rampage near the Polish border he killed over 40 people in one village, but remained at large despite the mobilisation of an army division and armoured personnell carriers.  His reason?   Inner voices told him to do it, apparently.

 

#8 ANDREI CHIKATILO-  52+ murders
Place: Rostov, Russia    Date: 1980s - 1990s    Victims: Children
Chikatilo was a teacher and a members of the Communist Party, but as he grew older he began stalking children, disembowelling and mutilating them.  His crimes were overlooked for so long because he was a Party members and partly because the Russians weren't keen to admit a child killing sadist was stalking their utopia.   Chikatilo's trial in 1994, full of descriptions of how he'd boil and eat testicles and nipples, was the first celebrity serial killer trial in the former USSR.  There's a film version, Citizen X, with Donald Sutherland.  He was killed by firing squad in 1994.

 

#7 BRUNO LUDKE-  86 murders
Place: Germany    Date: 1928 - 1943    Victims: Women
Between 1928 and 1943 Ludke, a laundry van driver, strangled and stabbed over 80 women, with lttle discrimination.  Having been arrested for killing one woman, he promptly confessed to 85 other murders.  The Nazis having already sterilised him as a mental defective and suspected rapist, could not indict him because he was insane - as Ludke delighted in pointing out.  They solved the problem by sending him to a research hospital in Vienna, where he was used as a human guinea-pig.  On 8 April 1944 one of the experiments in which he was involved in proved fatal.

 

#6 DELFINA & MARIA DE JESUS GONZALES- 91+ murders
Place: Guanajuato, Mexico    Date: 1955 - 1964     Victims: Prostitutes and their johns.
Sisters Delfina and Maria ran the Rancho El Angel in Mexico.   They recruited working girls, got them hooked on drugs and forced them to serve the perverse and humiliating desires of their clientele.  If girls became too ill, damaged by repeated rape or lost their looks, they killed them.  They also offed visitors flashed over large wads.  the police picked up Josefina Guuierez, a procuress, on suspicion of kidnapping young girls in the Guanajuato area, and she gave up the sisters.  When police raided the bordello they uncovered the remains of 11 men, 80 women and several foetuses.  the sisters were sentanced to 40 years each.

 

#5 NIKOLAI DZHURMONGALIEV-   100 murders
Place: Russia    Date;1980 - 1991    Victims: Women, usually tall attractive ones
They like cannibalism in Russia - perhaps it's the poor state of the local scoff.  NIKOLAI DZHURMONGALIEV - known as 'Metal Fang' because of his white metal false teeth - is the king of the Soviet cannibals, slaughtering and serving up around 100 women to his dinner guests in the Russian republic of Kazakhstan.  he believed women and prostitution were the root of all evil.  After friends discovered a head and intestines in the kitchen he was sent to an insane asylum in Tashkent, from which he bribed his way out.  he was then incarcarated after being found guilty of only seven murders, but escaped in 1989.  The Russian authorities never admitted he'd got out, and spent two years trying to recapture him, eventually tracking him to Uzbekistan.   Interior Minister Colonel Yuri Dubyagin described him as: "absolutly normal, but at one point [he] got a taste of female meat."  An attitude which may explain why there are so many high-scoring serial killers in Russia.  He was held not responsable for his actions, he's back in the loony bin.

 

#4 PEE WEE GASKINS-  100+ murders
Place: American South    Date: 1960s     Victims: Indiscriminate

Dubbed America's meanest serial killer, Pee Wee traced his history of violence back to watching a cobra eat a live rat at a carnival.  He spent most of his childhood getting into trouble, and because of his small stature was frequently abused in prison.   He snapped and killed a notorious murderer while the man was taking a dump, making him a legend.  Released in 1969, he began to carry out two varieties of killings while making money from fencing stolen cars.  His 'coastal kills' were people he picked up driving around the Deep South and murdered for pleasure, while his 'serious murders' were people he knew and disliked. He claimed to have killed over 200 people.   After killing another inmate in a maximum security jail, Pee Wee was fried on 6 sept 1991.  His autobiography, the strangely lyical Final Truth, was published posthumously.

 

#3 HERMAN MUDGETT (AKA H. H. HOLMES)-  200+ murders
Place: Chicago    Date: 1890s    Victims: Boarding house guests
'Dr Holmes' started out stealing corpses from the University of Michigan and moved onto Chicago, where he made o fortune with a chain of drug stores.  He used his wealth to build a 100 room house full of gas chambers, trap doors, acid vats, lime pits and secret doors.  During the 1893 World Fair he rented rooms and killed most of their occupants, moving on to attracting women to his home, forcing them to sign over their savings and then throwing them down an elevator shaft before gassing them.   When plice rumbled him, he burned his torture castle down.  The remains of over 200 victims were found in the ruins.  Mudgett became the first celebrity psycho in the US after a sensational trial.  He was hanged on 7 May 1896.

 

#2 HENRY LEE LUCAS & OTTIS TOOLE200+ murders
Place: America    Date: 1964 - 1979    Victims: Mostly hitch-hikers of all ages and both sexes
Henry started bad - the boys alcoholic father was left legless after an encounter with a freight train and killed himself because of his prostitute wife's nagging.  Henry sliced his own eye open while playing with a knife as a kid, and as hi mom did nothing about it, he had to have it removed.  On another occasion she sent him to school in girls' clothing with curled hair.  Unsuprisingly he began his killing spree by sticking a knife in her back and raping her corpse.  He served 10 years in Ionia State Psychiatric Hospital for that.  On his release he launched into a killing spree, having already warned the authorities he was going to kill again.
    Ottis was even more screwed up.  A psychotic retard with transvestite tendancies, he had a taste for human flesh.  Henry only failed to join his meals because, he said, he disliked Ottis' choice of barbeque sauce.  The pair specialised in the randon killing of hitch-hikers, often just running them over in they weren't in the mood for torture.  But they fell out when Henry began having sex with with Ottis' seven year old niece
Henry and Ottis confessed to more than 500 murders between them; but many experts doubt that figure and maintain that 200 is more reasonable.  Some believe that Henry may have only murdered a handful of people, and was simply fed information by police officers keen to clear up innumerable unsolved killings.  A fictionalised account of their rampage is at the heart of John McNaughtons 1989 cinematic classic Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer.  Henry currently awaits execution in Texas.  Ottis died of liver failure in 1996 whilst serving six consecutive life sentances.

 

#1 PEDRO ALONSO LOPEZ-  300+ murders
Place: Peru, Columbia and Ecuador    Date: 1970s     Victims: Young girls, mostly pre-teens
Lopez was kicked out by his prostitute mother at the age of eight, after she caught him fondling his younger sister.  He was picked up by a paedophile and raped, and was laer gang-banged in prison, retaliating by killing three of his rapists.
    By 1978 it's reckoned he'd killed at least 100 girls in Peru; when attention fell on him he moved back to his native Columbia and then on to Ecuador.   Here he killed three girls a week on average, preferring them because they were "more gentle and trusting, more innocent."  In 1980 uncovered one of his many victims' graves and he was rapidly arrested and tricked into confession whilst being held in prison.

    At first police refused to believe the numbers he mentioned but he quickly identified the sites of  more than 50 burials, lending credence to his claim as the most prolific serial killer to date.  He was convicted of murder in Ecuador, Lopez will languish in prison for the rest of his life.

Thanks to BIZARRE magazine for the words and info...  not that they know anything about it of course ;)