Our society is at once intrigued and repulsed by serial killers. Popular TV shows like Dexter, Hannibal, and Bates Motel feed into our morbid fascination with murderous psychopaths, while at the same time, true crime stories and graphic news headlines remind us of the disturbing and terrifying realities of such crimes.  

The FBI defines a "serial killer" as a person who has committed at least two murders on separate occasions. With over 2,625 documented cases, the United States has produced more serial killers than any other country. And Texas, in particular, has produced some of the most notorious.

From the Servant Girl Annihilator in the 1880s to the Candyman in the 1970s, Texas law enforcement officers have been burdened with many high-profile serial murder cases over the years. Here are the most notorious serial killers from Texas.

Ángel Maturino Reséndiz was a Mexican serial killer who was active in the '80s and '90s in the US. After being apprehended in 1999, Reséndiz confessed to 15 murders, eight of which occurred in Texas. He became known as the "Railroad Killer" because he would train-hop across the country and commit burglary, rape, and murder near railways. On June 27, 2006, he was executed by lethal injection.

During his murder spree in the early '90s, Charles Albright assaulted and shot three prostitutes in the Dallas area. He became known as the ''Eyeball Killer'' because he removed the victims' eyeballs from their corpses. In December 1991, Albright was found guilty of murdering Shirley Williams and sentenced to life imprisonment.

Between 1970 and 1973, Dean Corll murdered at least 28 young men and boys in the Houston area. With the help of his two teenage accomplices, Elmer Wayne Henley and David Brooks, Corll abducted, raped, and tortured his victims before burying their bodies. He was called the "Candy Man" because he once worked at his mother's candy factory and would hand out candy to local kids. In August 1973, Corll's sadistic spree finally came to an end when Henley shot and killed him.

In the 1980s, Genene Jones murdered between 11 and 46 children while working as a pediatric nurse in San Antonio and Kerrville, TX. She injected her victims with lethal doses of drugs that induced paralysis or heart failure. In 1985, Jones was sentenced to 99 years in prison for the murder of 15-month-old Chelsea McClellan; she was concurrently sentenced to 60 years in prison for the attempted murder of one-month-old Rolando Santos. Jones is serving her sentence at a women's prison in Gatesville, TX, though she is expected to be paroled in 2018.

After his arrest in 1983, Henry Lee Lucas boasted that he had claimed the lives of thousands; however, the majority of his confessions are believed to be false. Only three murders can be linked to Lucas with certainty, and these include the 1960 stabbing death of his mother and the 1982 murders of 15-year-old Becky Powell and 82-year-old Kate Rich in Texas. On March 12, 2001, he died of heart failure while serving a life sentence in prison.

Joe Ball was a 1930s bootlegger who is believed to have killed between two and 20 women. In Elmendorf, TX, he opened a saloon and built a pond that contained five alligators to which he fed live animals. When deputies began questioning Ball about the recent disappearances of several women, he shot himself with a pistol. Over time, Ball has become a part of Texas folklore, and many details of his life and crimes are still unknown.

In 1966, Kenneth McDuff and Roy Dale Green abducted and murdered a group of teenagers; the two boys were shot, while the girl was raped and then strangled with a broomstick. After serving time in prison, McDuff was paroled in 1989 and quickly resumed his killing spree, which included the murders of at least five other women. McDuff was eventually caught and convicted, and on November 18, 1998, he was executed by lethal injection.

The Servant Girl Annihilator (aka the Austin Axe Murderer) was an unidentified serial killer that terrorized Austin in the 1880s. Of his eight victims, five were African-American women employed as domestic servants. The killer's MO involved attacking his victims with an axe while they were asleep and then sexually assaulting them. Some theorists believe 19-year-old Nathan Elgin committed the murders, while others believe the Annihilator moved to London and became Jack the Ripper.

In the spring of 1946 in Texarkana, TX, the Phantom Killer murdered five people and injured three others during a 10-week period. His MO involved shooting young couples parked on secluded lovers' lanes late at night. The first couple survived the attack and described the assailant as wearing a white sack with holes cut out for his eyes. To this day, the Phantom Killer's identity is still unknown.

Johnny Meadows was an active serial killer between 1968 and 1971 in Odessa, TX. Though his exact victim count remains unknown, he is generally believed to have abducted and killed four women. In 1972, he was sentenced to 99 years in prison for the murder of Gloria Sue Nix Green.

Who was David Berkowitz? A serial killer better known as the Son of Sam, he was also called The .44 Caliber Killer. Born Richard David Falco, David Berkowitz terrorized New York City in the 1970s, killing six people and wounding seven more before he was caught. He targeted couples and young women with long, dark hair, a decision many link to his obsessions surrounding his absent birth mother and deceased adoptive mother, as well as his inability to meet women. About women, he said, "I didn't want to hurt them, I only wanted to kill them."

The Son of Sam is famous for believing he was controlled by his neighbor's dog, but there are many more Son of Sam facts that are less well-known today, including the fact that he is now believed to be a Christian prophet by fringe believers today. Read on for more facts about this mysterious and misunderstood serial killer.

Among Berkowitz's many stated reasons for why he committed his crimes, one stands out - he once claimed that his neighbor's dog contained the soul of a 6,000 year old man named Sam. "He told me [to kill] through his dog, as he usually does," David wrote. 

After his incarceration, Berkowitz became a born-again Christian - but not just any born-again Christian. He now claims that Satan and God are at war over his soul, and a group of Christian believers holds him up as proof that even the most apparently evil people can be saved. In fact, some call him an "apostle," comparing him to the Biblical Paul, who was also a murderer before being saved.

After his arrest, Berkowitz claimed to be a member of an occult group that worshipped Satan. Other members of his supposed cult included John Carr, the owner of the "possessed" dog, and his son Michael. Berkowitz carried this idea with him into the present, telling a reporter in 1993 that, "We made a pact, maybe with the devil, but also with each other... We were going to go all the way with this thing. We’re soldiers of Satan now. I was just too far in, too loyal, too much playing the role of the soldier and trying to please people." 

Berkowitz's birth parents were Joseph Kleinman and Betty Broder. At the time of his birth, Broder was married to a man named Tony Falco. Falco had abandoned her and their daughter, but she never divorced him, despite having an affair with Joseph Kleinman, who was also married. Because of this, Broder listed Falco as the father on Berkowitz's birth certificate. He was later adopted by Nathan and Pearl Berkowitz. 

For reasons that are still not completely understood, Berkowitz targeted young women in their 20s that had long, dark hair. This might have something to do with his only known sexual encounter - with a Korean prostitute who gave him VD. After his victim profile made the news, many women in the New York City area cut their hair and dyed it other colors in order to ensure their safety.

Berkowitz later said, "I was literally singing to myself on my way home, after the killing. The tension, the desire to kill a woman had built up in such explosive proportions that when I finally pulled the trigger, all the pressures, all the tensions, all the hatred, had just vanished, dissipated, but only for a short time."

After a several psychiatrists analyzed a letter than he had left near his victims, they believed that Berkowitz had paranoid schizophrenia. Parts of the letter (including lines like "When father Sam gets drunk he gets mean. He beats our family. Sometimes he ties me up to the back of the house. Other times he locks me in the garage. Sam loves to drink blood. 'Go out and kills' commands father Sam") led them to think that he suffered from delusions. However, Berkowitz underwent a thorough mental evaluation after his arrest, and was found mentally fit. 

Berkowitz targeted couples in cars. He once stated that, "The girls call me ugly and they bother me the most." It is believed that he was jealous of the couples, since he had a hard time attracting and dating women. He targeted three different couples during his killing spree; in most cases, wounding one and injuring the other. 

Although the Hall and Oates album containing the song "Rich Girl" didn't come out until roughly a month after Berkowitz started killing, he still claimed to be influenced by the lyrics.

After killing Alexander Esau and Valentina Suriani on April 16, 1977, Berkowitz left a letter near their bodies. It was addressed to "Captain Joe Borelli of Operation Omega"and in it, he claimed to be "the Son of Sam." This new moniker stuck with him as Berkowitz continued his killing spree. 

Berkowitz started out his criminal career as an arsonist. He set a reported 1,488 fires in New York City and dutifully recorded each one in his journal - all before he ever killed his first victim.

While Hollywood darlings often get free passes for bad behavior, occasionally, even actors get arrested, convicted, and punished for their wrong-doings just like the rest of us. This is a list of actors who have spent more than 30 days in prison for crimes they definitely did commit. Have we all forgotten about Iron Man Robert Downey Jr.'s horrible years-long abuse of drugs and alcohol? Or Mark Wahlberg's extremely violent history as a teen thug growing up in Boston? One Oscar-winning actor went to jail after beating up a photographer. These familiar faces have been busted and locked in the pen to really think about what they've done.

Who are the most famous actors arrested and sentenced to real jail time? Robert Downey Jr. tops our list. From 1999-2000, he spent almost a year in a California substance abuse treatment facility and state prison after several parole violations associated with multiple drug charges. In 1987, Academy Award-winner Sean Penn spent 33 days in jail after assaulting an extra on a film set.

When he was 16 years old, Mark Wahlberg assaulted a Vietnamese man with a stick, knocking him unconscious while shouting racial epithets. On the very same day, he also nearly blinded a second Vietnamese man. Wahlberg was sentenced to two years in prison for attempted murder and served 45 days of the prison sentence.

Which actor's criminal past surprises you the most? Share your thoughts in the comments section.

When he was 16 years old, Mark Wahlberg assaulted a Vietnamese man with a stick, knocking him unconscious. On the very same day, attacked a second Vietnamese man who had already lost an eye in the Vietnam war. Both crimes were unprovoked. 

After pleading guilty to both counts, he was sentenced to two years in prison for attempted murder, but only ended up serving 45 days of that sentence.

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You're on the highway when you catch a glimpse of a Mack truck approaching your car from behind. Its metallic grill shines in the sun, blinding you for an instant as the truck switches lanes to pull up next to you.

In the front of the truck is a driver. He appears normal. Trailing behind is the bed of the truck, full of secrets. A majority of the time the thing in the back of the truck is just an item on its way to a warehouse. But sometimes it is something more sinister. Sometimes the person behind the wheel is a monster.

Truck drivers have the perfect job for serial killing. The FBI has concluded the profession is convenient for aspiring serial killers to pick up unsuspecting victims and discard them along the road in another state miles away.

While a life on the road makes many killer truckers hard to find, there have been several convicted serial killers got caught committing murders on their dream jobs. Here is a list of some of the creepiest truck driver crimes to have occurred on the open road.

Keith Jesperson was a Canadian truck driver who raped and killed prostitutes across the highways of the United States and Canada between 1990 and 1995. When his killings didn’t receive much attention from the media, the trucker began taunting them by leaving notes with smiling faces in truck stops near the crime scenes. The acts garnered the murderer the nickname “The Happy Face Killer.”

Jesperson’s killing ended in 1995 after he murdered his girlfriend. He was convicted for the deaths of eight women, but he confessed to killing over 160.

In November 1998, long haul trucker Wayne Adam Ford calmly walked into the Humboldt County Sheriff’s office in Eureka, California, and presented them with a woman’s severed breast. He shocked authorities even further when he confessed to murdering four women between 1997 and 1998, possibly more.

Ford often picked up young, white hitchhikers during his truck routes. He would rape and kill them in his truck, then keep their bodies for several days before disposing of them. He confessed to his crimes because God told him to do so. He was arrested and sentenced to death for the murders.

Metheny was an obese, 6-foot-tall serial killer with an appetite for human flesh. In 1995, he killed two prostitutes, dismembered their bodies, and stored their body parts in his freezer. Following his eventual arrest, he claimed he used human flesh mixed in with hamburger meat and sold it to customers as his hamburger stand.

Previously, Metheny worked as a truck driver in 1994, which is where the desire to kill and consume people first came to his mind. It was during this time that his wife left him, taking along their son, and setting off the rage-filled monster within him.

Accused serial killer and truck driver Bruce Mendenhall was arrested in June 2007 for the murder of Sara Hulbert in Tennessee. He was charged with killing three other women at truck stops in Alabama, Indiana, and Tennessee.

Mendenhall was first suspected by police when his rig and trailer were seen by a witness near the location where Hulbert’s body was discovered. When authorities caught up to him, they found blood inside the truck. The trucker soon confessed to killing at least five other women, all at truck stop locations.

The murderer also previously ran for mayor in Illinois. Thankfully, he lost.

Adam Leroy Lane was a long-haul trucker who wanted to hunt humans. Inside his truck sat a DVD - Hunting Humans - which inspired and instructed him how to live out his dark fantasies of overpowering and killing a person. His job as a trucker helped him find victims close to the highway, allowing him to slip in and out of states conveniently.

In July 2007, he came upon Darlene Ewalt in the backyard of her Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, home. He stabbed her to death while her family was inside the house. Next, Lane attacked a woman in York County, Pennsylvania, but she survived. After that, he traveled to New Jersey and killed Monica Massaro.

Initially, police found it difficult to connect the crimes due to the different locations. However, on July 30, 2007, Lane made the mistake of attacking a 15-year-old-girl in her bedroom as her parents slept in the next room. The girl’s father came upon the killer trying to kill his daughter and was able to subdue him. He was arrested by police in Chelmsford, MA, and with the help of DNA and a confession, they were able to connect Lane to the three other crimes.

Timothy Jay Vageades was a Minnesota truck driver who kidnapped young women and kept them in a torture room inside his truck, which he called the Twilight Express. He wore fangs, and forced his victims to wear fake fangs as well, before drilling their teeth down into actual fangs.

He was arrested during a routine truck stop inspection when inspectors learned that Vageades's passenger had a protection order against him. As it turns out, he kidnapped the 19-year-old girl - a relative - and kept her in his truck for six months.

James Robert Cruz seemed like a typical family man, working hard as a truck driver to support his wife and daughter. Little did his family know, Cruz had a dark secret: he was a murderer. In 1997, Cruz picked up 17-year-old runaway Dawn Birnbaum, strangled her, and discarded her body near a truck stop in Pennsylvania.

Police were able to connect Cruz to the murder by looking at his truck route. He was in the area at the time Birnham went missing, and her DNA was discovered in his car.  Cruz was sentenced to life in prison for the teen’s murder. He denied killing her.

Between 1978 and 1992, women were murdered in areas like Tennessee, Arkansas, Pennsylvania, and Kentucky. The killer remains unknown, but it is known he had a particular type of victim: redheaded women.

At least six women with reddish hair were found dead along the side of highways in the United States, and many are suspected of being hitchhikers or prostitutes at the time of their deaths.

Due to the varied locations where the victims were found, authorities suspect the killer to be a truck driver. However, they have no evidence to confirm their theories at this time.

Between 1977 and 1978, over two dozen individuals were carelessly murdered along the highways of Pennsylvania and Ohio. Long haul trucker Edward Surratt would break into homes belonging to couples, and immediately kill the male with a shotgun. He would then kidnap the female, rape her, and then kill her, too.

He was arrested in 1978 for raping a mother and daughter in front of their bound husband and father; however, police long suspected him of a total of 18 murders. In 2007, he finally confessed to six unsolved slayings that had plagued the Ohio area for 30 years.

Robert Ben Rhoades prowled the roads of Texas and Illinois, picking up hitchhikers and murdering them in his long haul truck between 1975 and 1990. The killer turned the cab of his truck into a torture chamber where he inflicted pain on his unsuspecting victims.

Rhoades most infamous case was the kidnapping and murder of 14-year-old Regina Kay Walters. The driver picked her up with her boyfriend in Texas and held her in captivity for several days after killing her boyfriend. Before ending her life, Rhoades took an eerie photo of the frightened Regina in a barn where her body was later found.

Rhoades was arrested in 1990 and convicted for three murders; however, police suspect he may have been involved in up to 50.

Have you ever heard of hybristophilia? It's a psychological condition where someone is aroused by the idea of someone else committing a terrible act, including murder, rape, and robbery. While sitting behind bars - or glass, these days - Ted Bundy, Richard Ramirez, both Menendez brothers, and several members of the Manson family managed to find Read on to find a number of people who may suffer from hybristophilia, because they all chose to marry people who had committed and been convicted of horrifying violent crimes. Or maybe they just liked to feel needed? By captive partners who could neither cheat nor do the dreaded "pop-in"? These ladies (and one man) engaged in prison marriages with psychotic murderers, most of whom were sentenced to be incarcerated for the rest of their lives.

While it may seem insane to most people, believe it or not, there are people who are attracted to murderers. Many of these people get married to serial killers even after their convictions - though in some cases, they continue to believe their partner is innocent even when the evidence suggests otherwise.

Richard Ramirez was the famous "Night Stalker" serial killer and rapist, who terrorized the Los Angeles and San Francisco area from 1984 to 1985. Ramirez received hundreds of letters from women in prison, including more than 75 from Doreen Lioy.

Ramirez proposed to Lioy in 1988, and the two were married eight years later, in San Quentin Prison. Lioy insists that her husband is innocent.

"He's kind, he's funny, he's charming," she said. "I think he's really a great person. He's my best friend; he's my buddy."

Notorious serial killer Ted Bundy was famous for killing more than 30 women. He was also known for being extremely handsome and charming. Perhaps that's why a former coworker of Bundy's, Carole Ann Boone, married the murderer after he famously proposed to her in court. (In fact, Bundy married her right then and there, using a bizarre loophole in Florida law stating that just a declaration of marriage in the presence of a judge constitutes a legal marriage.)

Boone would later give birth to Bundy's daughter, even though conjugal visits weren't allowed in his Florida prison.

Zayd Rashid killed a woman during a botched robbery in New York. While imprisoned, Rashid read poetry at a class his future wife, former Essence Editor-at-large Asha Bandele, was taking. Bandele would later write a book detailing their romance called A Prisoner's Wife.

The younger of the Menendez Brothers, who killed their own parents for financial gain, Erik Menendez married Tammi Ruth Saccoman in the waiting room of Folsom State Prison.

Tammi Menendez described the marriage as"something that I've dreamed about for a long time. And it's just something very special that I never thought that I would ever have."

Erik is not allowed conjugal visits, and Tammi has said, "Not having sex in my life is difficult, but it's not a problem for me. I have to be physically detached, and I'm emotionally attached to Erik."

Tammi and her daughter Talia drive 150 miles every weekend to visit Erik. Talia calls her stepfather "Earth Dad," in contrast to her deceased biological father.

Tammi published a book, They Said We'd Never Make It - My Life With Erik Menendez, covering her relationship with Erik.

One half of the Hillside Stranglers, who claimed the lives of 10 women in the late 1970s, Kenneth Bianchi would go on to marry Shirlee Joyce Book, a pen pal, via phone call while he was imprisoned in 1989. 

Susan Atkins is another infamous member of the Manson Family. She was convicted for eight of the nine murders committed by the group.

Atkins would go on to marry twice while imprisoned. First she married Donald Lee Laisure in 1981 - after Donald had previously been married 35 times. The two divorced after he planned to marry yet another woman.

Then Atkins married James Whitehouse in 1987. He was a Harvard Law graduate who was 15 years younger than she.

Tex Watson was a member of the Manson Family, who together murdered five people, most notably actress Sharon Tate. After converting to Christianity in 1975 and publishing the book Will You Die For Me? in 1978, Watson married Kristin Joan Svege in 1979.

Together through conjugal visits, they had four children. The couple divorced in 2003 after being married for 24 years, though the two remain friends.

Charles Manson was the leader of the Manson Family, a group of young people who famously killed nine people in Los Angeles over the course of five weeks during the summer of 1969, though Manson was never convicted of killing anyone personally.

Manson intended to marry Afton Elaine "Star" Buron, who was 53 years his junior, but their wedding was called off after it was discovered that Burton was attempting to make money from Manson by allegedly planning to display his corpse in LA once he'd died.

Oscar Bolin was a carnival worker who killed three women in Florida and was executed in 2016. He was famously married to Rosalie Martinez, who was a member of his own legal defense team, while he was on death row in 1996.

Martinez left her husband, also a lawyer, to marry Bolin. Martinez said she made the dramatic move in part to demonstrate Bolin's innocence.

Martinez never stopped believing in that innocence. The two remained married until his execution in Florida in January 2016. 

One half of the infamous Menendez Brothers, who killed their own parents for financial gain, older brother Lyle Menendez married his prison pen pal and former model Anna Eriksson on July 2, 1996. The two were subsequently divorced on April 1, 2001, after Eriksson discovered that Menendez was cheating on her by writing to another woman.

Two years later, Menendez remarried, this time to his long-time friend Rebeccea Snead, at a ceremony in the maximum security visiting area of Mule Creek State Prison.

Jeffrey Dahmer wasn't just one of the country's most notorious serial killers - he was one who used truly creative and horrifying ways to torture, kill, and dispose of his victims, from eating their body parts to trying to make them into "zombies" by injecting drugs directly into their brains. According to Dahmer, he was motivated by a desire to take total possession of men whom he found physically attractive, whether by photo-documenting their dead bodies or by storing their parts in this refrigerator.

Steven Tuomi was Dahmer’s second victim. He was killed at the Ambassador Hotel and then placed in a trunk. Before this happened, Dahmer tore into Tuomi’s chest and tried to remove his heart with his bare hands.  Dahmer took Tuomi’s body back to his grandmother’s house, where he proceeded to cut him up and throw his body parts away. Unlike Dahmer’s other victims, Tuomi’s remains were never found.

Raymond Smith was Dahmer’s seventh victim. Smith was picked up in a bar named Club 219, when the victim accepted Dahmer’s offer of posing for a few pictures in order to make some quick cash. Instead, Dahmer drugged, strangled, and then dismembered him. After the flesh was removed from Smith’s skull, Dahmer painted it gray and then placed it on a shelf in his fridge.

According to Dahmer, “The only motive that there ever was was to completely control a person; a person I found physically attractive. And keep them with me as long as possible, even if it meant just keeping a part of them.”

Ernest Miller met Dahmer in front of a bookstore, and accepted his offer of money in exchange for sex. Instead, Miller was drugged, following Dahmer’s usual modus operandi. However, Miller wasn’t strangled - Dahmer slit his throat, took pictures of his body, and then cut him into pieces. Miller’s biceps wound up in the freezer, while his skin was dissolved in acid and his bones bleached.

According to Dahmer,

the Soilex removes all the flesh, turns it into a jelly-like substance and it just rinses off. Then I laid the bones in a light bleach solution, left them there for a day and spread them out on either newspaper or cloth and let them dry for about a week in the bedroom.

Oliver Lacy was Dahmer’s second-to-last victim. Like the others, he was drugged and strangled, then dismembered and placed in a vat of acid. However, Dahmer kept his heart, placing it on a shelf in his refrigerator. Shortly after this, Dahmer was caught by the police. During his confession, he told them that he put it there “to eat later.”

According to reports, Tony Hughes and Dahmer were friends for about two years before Dahmer killed him. He lured Hughes to his house by writing him a letter (Hughes could not hear or speak) offering him $50 in exchange for nude pictures. Hughes showed up to pose, only to be drugged, strangled, and dismembered. His skull was stored in Dahmer’s apartment.  

Joseph Bradehoft was Dahmer’s last murder victim. He picked up Bradehoft at a bus stop, where he offered the usual exchange of sex and nude pictures for money. Bradehoft was then drugged, strangled with a strap, and chopped into pieces which were then dissolved in acid. His skull was found in Dahmer’s freezer with the others.

Steven Hicks has the honor of being Dahmer’s very first victim. Dahmer was right out of high school when he picked up Hicks, a hitchhiker. Dahmer took Hicks to his home, where he got him drunk and then hit Hicks with a barbell before strangling him to death. He buried Hicks’s dismembered remains in the backyard, and then later on, dug them up, skinned them, smashed his bones to bits, and spread them throughout a ravine.

Dahmer met Jeremiah Weinberger at a club on Well Street in Milwaukee. He lured Weinberger home, spent an entire day with him, and then knocked him out with a drugged drink. Then Dahmer strangled the man who became his 15th victim and photographed the process of dismembering him. As with many other victims, Weinberger’s skull wound up in Dahmer’s freezer.

During his trial, Dahmer stated, 

I was completely swept along with my own compulsion. I don't know how else to put it. It didn't satisfy me completely, so maybe I was thinking, "Maybe another one will. Maybe this one will." And the numbers started growing and growing and just got out of control, as you can see.

Konerak Sinthasomphone was a 14-year-old that Dahmer drugged in his apartment. However, rather than strangle the boy, as he did his other victims, Dahmer instead drilled a hole in the back of his head, injected hydrochloric acid into the front sections of his brain, and performed other horrifying experiments, all while trying to create a sex zombie who would do his bidding. When this didn’t work, Dahmer dismembered him and stored his body parts in acid.

James Doxater, Dahmer’s third victim, was only 14 years old when the serial killer picked him up on a street corner. Doxater was drugged, then strangled. By this time, Dahmer was honing his body disposal methods, so Doxater receives the morbid prize of being the first to have the flesh melted from his bones as his body sat in a vat of acid. His bones were later smashed and scattered, much like Tuomi’s.

Aileen Wuornos was born in 1956 to 16-year-old Diane Wuornos. Two months later, Diane filed from divorce from Aileen's father, Leo Dale Pittman, who was incarcerated for sex crimes against children. Diane abandoned Aileen and her brother, Keith, in 1960, before Aileens 4th birthday. Aileen never met her father. He was diagnosed as schizophrenic and hanged himself in prison in 1969. Diane's parents, Lauri and Britta Wuornos, officially adopted Keith and Aileen in 1960. 

Aileen Wuornos killed 7 men from 1989-1990 while working as a prostitute. She believed that each man attempted to sexually assault her and was therefore killing them in self-defense. She was sentenced to death and executed by lethal injection in 2002.

Joel Rifkin was born in 1959 to two college students, aged 20 and 24. At three weeks old, he was adopted by Benjamin and Jeanne Rifkin. Three years later, the family adopted another baby, a daughter.

Rifkin killed at least 9 prostitutes, although some believe he is responsible for the more. When he was caught in 1993, he was sentenced to 203 years in prison.

One of the "Hillside Stranglers," Kenneth Bianchi was born to a prostitute in 1951. At three months old, he was adopted by Nicholas and Frances Bianchi, and he was their only child. 

With his cousin, Angelo Buono - the son of Frances's sister - Kenneth Bianchi was half of the Hillside Strangler duo, responsible for the rape and murder of 12 women. During his trial, Bianchi attempted an insanity plea but was unsuccessful. He was sentenced to life in prison.

Ted Bundy was born in 1946 to Eleanor "Louise" Cowell, who claimed to have been seduced by a sailor named Jack Worthington. Until he was three years old, he was raised by his grandparents, Samuel and Eleanor Cowell, who he believed to be his actual parents. Bundy did not know the true circumstances of his birth until he was in his early 20s. When he was five years old, Louise married Johnny Culpepper Bundy, who formally adopted Ted later that year. Louise and Johnny had four children.

Bundy killed at least 30 women between 1974 and 1978. He kidnapped, raped, and killed victims in multiple states. He was found guilty and sentenced to death. Ted Bundy was executed by electrocution in 1989.