PRESENTATION OUTLINE
Known as “The Co-ed Killer”, Edmund Kemper is an American serial killer and necrophile who carried out a series of brutal murders in California in the 1970s. He murdered his grandparents when he was 15 years old then later killed and dismembered six female hitchhikers in the Santa Cruz area. He then murdered his mother and one of her friends before turning himself in to the police days later. He was found guilty in November 1973 of eight counts of murder. He asked for the death penalty, but instead received life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.
Dennis Raider murdered 10 people in Sedgwick County, Wichita, Kansas between 1974 and 1991. Obsessed with notoriety, Raider sent taunting letters to police under the name BTK which stood for ‘Bind, Torture, Kill’. Rader stalked his victims before breaking into their homes, then bound their limbs before strangling them. Having disappeared in 1988, BTK reemerged in 2005 when he sent a floppy disc to the press (this was to be his downfall). Tracing him via the floppy disc, Rader was arrested and charged upon which he immediately confessed. He is serving 10 consecutive life sentences with an earliest possible release date of February 26, 2180.
In 1969, Gaskins began killing a series of hitchhikers he picked up while driving around the coastal highways of the American South, torturing and mutilating his victims. He claimed to have killed 80 to 90 people. He was arrested in 1975, when a criminal associate confessed to police that he had witnessed Gaskins killing two young men. He was convicted of eight murders and was sentenced to death which was later commuted to life imprisonment without parole. Remarkably Gaskins went on to commit another murder within the high security prison, killing a fellow inmate. He is the only man to have ever killed an inmate on death row.
Known as the “Acid Bath Murderer” John George Haigh was an English serial killer during the 1940s. He was convicted of the murders of six people, although he claimed to have killed nine. A professional con man, he targeted wealthy individuals and charmed them into believing he was a successful businessman. He lured his victims to a derelict warehouse before shooting them. He then dissolved their bodies in sulfuric acid before forging papers in order to sell their possessions and collect their life savings. In spite of the absence of the victims’ bodies, there was sufficient forensic evidence to convict Haigh of murder. In 1949 he was sentenced to death and hanged at Wandsworth Prison
Peter William Sutcliffe is a British serial killer known as “The Yorkshire Ripper”. In 1981 Sutcliffe was convicted of murdering 13 women and attempting to murder seven others. He targeted prostitutes in Leeds and Bradford causing a climate of fear across northern England. When arrested in January 1981 (for driving with false number-plates), police questioned him about the killings and he confessed. At his trial, he pleaded not guilty to murder on grounds of diminished responsibility, but his defense was rejected by the jury. He was sentenced to serve life in prison without parole and remains in Broadmoor Maximum Security Mental Hospital to this day
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