12 Terrifying Killers Who Definitely Had a Type

How do killers select their victims?  Because most serial killers are subconsciously addressing some psychic damage or injury inflicted by someone or something, serial killer patterns tend to repeat themselves. Serial killers typically kill the same types of victims again and again, seeking targets with common characteristics, whether of age, sex, or appearance. Here are some famous serial killers and the types of victims that they typically murdered.

Aileen Wuornos did not come from a very promising background. Her mother was 14 when she married her father, a schizophrenic child molester who hanged himself in prison. Aileen was pregnant in her early teens, sexually abused by her grandfather, and homeless in her early twenties. She survived by hitchhiking across the country and engaging in prostitution. In 1987, she moved in with her female girlfriend in Florida and supported them both through prostitution.

In late 1989, Aileen began to adopt a different approach to earning a living. Typically, she would lure male johns and then rob and shoot them. During the media spectacle that documented her prosecution and execution, she stated "I killed those men, robbed them as cold as ice. And I'd do it again, too." 

It would seem pretty clear that anger over spending many years as a prostitute was a driving factor in Wuornos's choice of victim.  In one of the more unlikely castings in recent memory, Charlize Theron won an Academy Award for her portrayal of Wuornos in the film Monster in 2003.      

Glen Edward Rogers has several nicknames: "The Cross Country Killer," "The Casanova Killer," and the "The Red Head Killer." From 1994 until 1995, Rogers crisscrossed the country, leaving death and violence in his wake and victims in California, Kentucky, Mississippi, Florida, Ohio, and Louisiana.  

His approach was fairly simple and involved hanging out in a dive bar, buying drinks for anyone he found appealing, and then asking one of these women for a ride to his motel room or apartment. At the time of these murders, Rogers sported long hair and a beard and was considered very attractive by the women who agreed to the fatal error of taking him home.

By the time these victims would be missed, Rogers would be long gone, usually in a stolen car and thousands of miles away from the scene of the crime. Although he claims to have killed up to seventy victims, including OJ Simpson's wife Nicole, Rogers has been credibly linked to the deaths of four women, all with red or strawberry blonde hair, many left in a water-filled bathtub. 

Rogers's psychological issue seems pretty basic: his mother was a redhead.  

Despite several brushes with execution, Rogers remains on death row in Florida.      

While incarcerated in California together, Roy Norris and Lawrence Bittaker decided on a very specific type of victim. They decided that they would abduct and murder young girls, one for each year between the ages of thirteen and nineteen.

Upon their release on parole for violent crimes, while supposedly being supervised closely, Bittaker and Norris routinely bought and sold marijuana, purchased hand guns, and roamed all over the South Bay region of Los Angeles for months.

After performing several dry runs with young women, Bittaker and Norris finally implemented their plan on June 24, 1979, forcing 16-year-old Cindy Schaefer into their customized van and speeding off into the remote San Gabriel Mountains.  There she was raped repeatedly, then strangled and tossed into a ravine. It would be six months before her relatives had any idea as to what happened to her.

Norris and Bittaker would kidnap and murder four more teenagers, in successively more brutal fashion. Ultimately, Norris would be arrested  on a parole violation and would agree to plead guilty to murder in exchange for a life sentence and his testimony against Bittaker. Bittaker was convicted of murder in 1981, sentenced to death plus 199 years, the judge wanting to insure he remained incarcerated even if his death sentence was somehow nullified. Bittaker remains on death row at San Quentin today, over four decades later.

From July of 1976 until his arrest in August of 1977, David Berkowitz AKA the "Son of Sam" terrorized the city of New York in a series of deadly shootings that claimed six lives and seriously injured seven others. These attacks all involved a .44 caliber pistol fired at close range, leading to his other nickname, the .44-Caliber Killer.

Berkowitz drove many miles along the streets and expressways of the greater New York area, searching for a very specific situation. He typically stalked couples sitting in parked cars, frequently in areas known as "lovers' lanes," where younger people congregated to make out.

Berkowitz also fixated on attractive women with long, dark, wavy hair. In fact, one of his victims was a male with shoulder-length dark hair, probably shot by mistake. Some have speculated his fixation with long, dark hair was due to his single sexual experience, with a Korean prostitute.

Berkowitz, a postal worker who remained employed throughout this incident, was arrested after an intensive manhunt lead to his home address. He was also linked to 1,400 serious, previously unsolved arsons in New York City.

A deeply disturbed individual troubled by female rejection and the circumstances of his illegitimate birth, Berkowitz is currently serving six consecutive life terms in a New York State prison facility.  

Joji Obara was a Korean national born Kim Song Jon, from a wealthy family, who legally changed his name to Joji Obara. After inheriting his father's fortune, Obara invested in real estate, only to go bust in a recession.  He then began laundering money for the Japanese underworld.

Obara had an almost fetish-like interest in Western women and ultimately became enmeshed in the Tokyo "hostess" culture that allowed men to drink in cocktail bars and converse politely with Western women. Frequently these "hostesses" would socialize outside of their respective clubs with their "dates," which was a part of the hostesses maintaining their clientele. In Obara's case, he ultimately began to invite numerous "hostesses" and other women to his apartment. There, they would be drugged and raped, waking up frequently with no recollection of what had happened to them.

Obara used a combination of chloroform and "date rape" drugs like rohypnol to induce a deep state of unconsciousness. Obara would frequently film his victims during his crimes - over two hundred videos were discovered by police of him molesting women while they were unconscious. Unfortunately, chloroform can be a deadly anesthetic when used improperly. Two women, Lucie Blackman from Great Britain and Carita Ridgway from Australia, died as a result of their interaction with Obara.

Obara is believed to have raped as many as 400 women and probably other undiscovered women were murdered by him. His sensational trial, followed closely in the UK and Japan, resulted in a life sentence but exposed the West to Japan's often eccentric judicial system.  

Randy Kraft is a serial murderer connected directly to the deaths of over 60 victims, mainly in Southern California. He focused primarily on young male hitchhikers, frequently Marines, and also patrons at gay bars he frequented.

There was a specific reason for Kraft's attention to these two types of individuals. His method of subduing his victims included handing them an alcoholic beverage once they entered his vehicle. Unbeknownst to the passenger, this drink had been laced with a massive amount of Valium and other depressants that would quickly render the victim helpless and unconscious. Kraft would then transport his victim either to his home or to a remote area where they would be subjected to horrific torture and sexual abuse, killed by strangulation, and then dumped along the freeways of Southern California. Kraft also killed victims while in Oregon, dumping their bodies on Interstate 5.

In 1975, police would actually question Kraft based on eyewitness testimony of two individuals who saw him with an individual subsequently discovered dead under suspicious circumstances. The Los Angeles DA's office refused to pursue the case, claiming they could not connect the body to Kraft, and he escaped prosecution.

Eight years later, police would have an easier time connecting Kraft to another murder. Having pulled Kraft over for suspicion of drunk driving, they found another body in the front seat of his car. In the back seat, they found over 50 Polaroids of various victims and in the trunk, a binder with a coded scorecard of 67 cryptic entries. California stopped prosecuting Kraft after he was given 16 separate death sentences, understanding that this would only drag out his appeals. Kraft sued a writer for 62 million dollars for "smearing his good name" while on death row. The case was dismissed, but the writer had to pay thousands in legal fees.

Juan Corona was a farm labor contractor in Yuba City, in the Sacramento area of California in the early seventies. He provided a large farm with the migrant labor necessary to pick the many crops growing on the property. With thousands of migrants flocking to the region, especially in the summer and fall, Corona would merely pull his truck up to any number of roadsides and enthusiastic laborers would jump in. Corona would transport them to barracks-like housing on the ranch and then get to know them. He would single out the most alcoholic, socially rootless, or vulnerable for murder.

Corona was quite methodical, which was ultimately his undoing. One evening, a peach farmer noticed a large hole dug in the middle of his orchard. When he returned the next day, the hole was filled. The police were notified, and a murder victim named Kenneth Whitacre was pulled out the hole. He had been sexually assaulted, stabbed, his head splayed open with a machete.

Eventually, more graves would be uncovered, paperwork and receipts tying the dead bodies to one "Juan V. Corona." By the time police concluded their investigation, 25 migrant workers had been exhumed from graves, many of them with direct links to Corona.

Shockingly, it seems that Corona was so brazen and murderous that he committed most of these crimes in the span of six weeks. He was convicted in January 1973 and, because California had no death penalty at the time, sentenced to life in prison. Corona was attacked and nearly killed in prison in 1973. Corona was granted a new trial and reconvicted in 1982. One of the most shocking serial murderers in US history, Corona is now largely forgotten. 

Edmund Kemper is not your typical serial killer:  6'9", 250 lbs, with an IQ of 145. That he could murder his grandparents at age 18 and be released from a California psychiatric hospital by age 21 demonstrated that he must be a remarkably persuasive and manipulative individual.

Unfortunately, in 1969, the hospital paroled him into the custody of his mother, Clarnell Kemper, an abusive, domineering woman. Edmund's father divorced this woman and said at the time, "Suicide missions in wartime and the later atomic bomb testings were nothing compared to living with [Clarnell]."

Edmund and his mother, an alcoholic with borderline personality disorder, began to have vicious screaming matches audible to the neighbors. He moved out of his mother's home in Aptos, CA, but had to move back in.

In mid-1972, Kemper noticed the remarkable number of attractive female college co-eds hitchhiking throughout the region. He loaded up his Ford Galaxie with knives, plastic bags, blankets, and handcuffs. At first, he simply picked up hitchhikers and dropped them off without harming them, as a type of practice. In nine months, Kemper would murder seven hitchiking co-eds, engaging in necrophilia and dismembering the corpses, leaving the remains in plastic bags in remote areas. In most cases, he would murder a girl immediately after having a fight with his mother.

Finally, on April 20, 1973, the real object of his hostility, his mother, goaded him into finally murdering her and grotesquely mutilating her body. He then invited his mother's best friend over for dinner, murdered her, stole her automobile, and hit the road. He also left a note behind, figuring the police would quickly discover the bodies. When they didn't, he began calling them from pay phones but couldn't get anyone to believe him. Finally, he was arrested in Colorado after speaking to an officer who knew him.

Convicted of eight counts of first degree murder, Kemper received a life sentence, which he is currently serving at the California Medical Facility, which typically serves those considered dangerously mentally ill, an assessment Kemper justifiably deserves.        

On July 22, 2011, terrorist Anders Breivik murdered 77 people in Oslo and Utoya Island, Norway.  In subsequent statements, Breivik described his behavior as "a minor barbarity to prevent a larger one": the cultural degradation of Norway through mass immigration.

In his rampage, Breivik went to an island youth camp that was run by a left-wing Norwegian political party. He was clearly targeting what he felt were individuals he termed "Marxist." He actually spared the life of one individual, claiming "This person... appeared right-wing, that was his appearance. That's the reason I didn't fire any shots at him."

Breivik was deemed sane and under the Norwegian legal system, was sentenced to the maximum of 21 years in prison.

Like many natives of Alaska, Robert Hansen like to hunt. In his case, though, his prey was young females he picked up in the topless bars of Anchorage. Prostitutes or "exotic" dancers, they were the type of attractive women who typically ignored Hansen in his ineffectual daily life as a baker. After getting their attention with money, Hansen would lure them into a vehicle, brandish a weapon, and restrain them with handcuffs. From there he would load them into his Piper Cub and fly them out to a remote cabin, where he subjected them to sexual abuse and ultimately death.

But Hansen was at least sporting enough to let his victims try and escape.  Giving them a bit of a head start, he would then stalk them like any other prey. Naked, in their bare feet, dozens of miles from any civilization, this wasn't much of a sporting chance. Seventeen women were murdered by Hansen, before one of his victims actually escaped from his plane before he took off and went running to a nearby motel.  The police were called and the subsequent investigation sent Hansen to prison with a sentence of 461 years.  He died of a heart attack in 2014.