14 Serial Killers Who Practiced Necrophilia

The Venn diagram of necrophiles and serial killers has surprisingly little crossover, but the serial killers who did enjoy having sex with corpses were (and are) some of the most brutal killers known to man. A serial killer's habits rarely change - at least, until the killer in question goes into their final, wild death march, when all rational thought goes out the window and they begin to get sloppy. Most serial killers who were necrophiliacs followed their modus operandi to a T, sometimes for years. And they all had sex with corpses for different reasons. Some killers couldn’t get a date; others were afraid to be abandoned or alone. And the most frightening necrophiliac killers simply had no regard for human life and wanted to instill as much fear in the general public as possible.

While many serial killers take a sick pride in their work, necrophiliacs rarely promote the fact that part of their sickness is the desire to make love to a corpse. In fact, most of the killers on here didn’t admit to having sex with a dead body until they were pressed on the facts by the police. The guys who did brag about their corpse love had either resigned themselves to the fact that they weren’t going to be seeing the outside of a cell ever again, or they might have been making it up to seem spooky. Keep reading to find out which serial killers eschewed dinner and a meal and got straight to the sex after they killed someone. 

Dennis Nilsen is the poster boy for process killers. From 1978 to 1983 he trapped and murdered women, then bathed and redressed their bodies to keep around until he finally dissected them and stored their body parts around his two apartments in London. Before the dissections, he would kiss, talk to, and sleep with the dead women, treating them like girlfriends.

During his confession, Nilsen was adamant about the fact that he never penetrated any of his victims after he murdered them, and made sure that police knew he only masturbated over the bodies or used his victims' thighs to get himself off. He said that his victims were "too perfect and beautiful for the pathetic ritual of commonplace sex."

Earle Nelson was a real piece of work. Nelson was known as "the Gorilla Man," and he was a devout Pentecostal with deeply ingrained sexual problems. His favorite way to kill was to pretend like he was going to rent an apartment, and then after he gained his prospective landlord's trust, he would strangle them to death, have sex with their corpse, and usually hide the body under a bed. Nelson never fully admitted to being a murderer or a necrophiliac, and most of the quotes from his trial are just about how only God could judge him.

His last words before his execution were: "I am innocent. I stand innocent before God and man. I forgive those who have wronged me and ask forgiveness of those I have injured. God have mercy!"

Ed Kemper, or the Coed Killer, was similar to Jeffrey Dahmer in that he was trying to make a personal connection with the women he killed, albeit in the worst way possible. In Kemper's work, the killing and necrophilia that followed was a way to "transfer the affection" from whomever his victim loved to Kemper himself. One gets the feeling that each time Kemper killed someone he equated it to going on a date. He buried one girl's head in the backyard, "with her face turned toward my bedroom window and, sometimes at night, I talked to her, saying love things, the way you do to a girlfriend or wife." 

Ed Gein was a killer and necrophile like no other. He did anything and everything he could imagine with the bodies of his victims and the corpses that he stole from local cemeteries. It seems like the one thing he didn't do with corpses was have sex with them because "they smelled too bad" after he dug them up. But he did make a "woman suit" out of the skin of his victims so that he could parade around the house and pretend to be his mother. Even though he never technically had sex with a corpse, the suit somehow seems worse. 

Henry Lee Lucas was prone to telling tall tales if not outright lying about his life, so it's hard to know what he did and didn't really do. Upon his capture, he confessed to hundreds of murders, and even said that he was being told who to kill by a Satanic government program (it was a whole thing). This kind of flamboyant nature also applies to his statements about necrophilia. At different times Lucas noted that five percent of his victims were murdered so that he might have sex with the bodies; however, he has claimed that he never killed anyone for the purpose of sex. 

"Sex is one of my downfalls. I get sex any way I can get it. If I have to force somebody to get it, I do. If I don’t, I don’t. I rape them; I’ve done that. I’ve killed animals to have sex with them. I’ve had sex while they’re alive. It’s about the same thing as far as having sex. I’ve killed nobody for sex."

Jeffrey Dahmer is definitely one of the most outspoken and open necrophiliacs. After his arrest in 1991, he granted a number of interviews and laid out his reasons for killing multiple men and having sex with their dead bodies: "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."

It would be heartbreaking and almost kind of romantic... if you didn't know he was talking about having sex with a corpse.

This walking yikes of a human being not only had a thing for necrophilia (specifically masturbating over the dead bodies of his victims), but he also loved feet! Every time he killed a young woman he would dress in women's clothing, strangle them, masturbate, and then dump their body in a river. But his first victim received the special treatment of having her left foot cut off so she could "model" the shoes he bought for her. He was also known to keep a pair of breasts that he cut off a woman and used as paperweights. He rarely spoke about his crimes, but he did order a hefty collection of shoe magazines to his prison cell in Oregon. 

Over the course of John Christie's ten-year career as a murderer and necrophile, he would redefine what it meant to have sex with corpses - and take part in the classic serial killer pastime of hiding corpses under his floorboards. Christie's brand of necrophilia was different than many, because he would asphyxiate and strangle his victims and then have sex with them as they were dying, and his release only came as their death spasms ended. While he never spoke about having sex with his victims, it's obvious that their rape was meant to be a final form of torture. 

You know Ted Bundy. He's the Republican serial killer who thought he could pull one over on the American justice system by representing himself in court. But before all of that, he was just another guy who had a serious ritualistic fetish when it came to having sex with his victims. His routine tended to be killing a woman and dumping her body somewhere in the woods, then returning at a later date to redress her corpse and have sex with it. Sometimes he even painted their nails and took photos of them. 

He told one interviewer: "When you work hard to do something right, you don't want to forget it."

This hunk of junk started out his career as a serial killer and necrophile after he took some time away from the scenic California town of Solvang and began picking up hitchhikers. From 1976 to 1979, Christiansen would pick up a woman, shoot them in the head with a .22 caliber pistol, and then sexually assault them post-mortem. He never spoke about his fetish for having sex with corpses, and he was murdered in prison two years after his arrest, but he is described by forensic science as having "typical class IX necrophiliac behavior." He had a preference for a very particular type of hair style, build, and style in his victims.