Crimes & Victims:
September 1972: Teenager Donna SERRA is strangled in Ray Township.
January 15, 1976: Cynthia CADIEUX (16) abducted the day before, is found raped and bludgeoned to death. [ReadOn]

On July 13, 1970, California Highway Patrol officers received reports of a hit-and-run accident at Big Sur. Three persons had been injured in one car, while two long-haired males sped away in another, fleeing the scene of the crash. Patrolmen found two longhairs walking down a nearby road and noted similarities in the descriptions. [ReadOn]

Anthony BALAAM, a Trenton (NJ) crack-addict, confessed to sodomizing and strangling four prostitutes, while they wanted sex for drugs.
BALAAM showed no remorse at all and played Mr. Nice Guy, when arrested August 8, 1996.
The killings occured within 2 miles from his home. BALAAM found his victims cruising neighbourhood at dawn, where women offered sex for crack.[ReadOn]

Between September 1970 and June 1972, residents of Queens, New York, were terrified by the activities of a nocturnal prowler who invaded homes at random, striking on the weekends, slashing women in their beds. [ReadOn]

Born in 1892, Joe Ball was a one-time bootlegger and tavern owner at Elmendorf, Texas, near San Antonio. In the 1930s, Ball ran the Sociable Inn, distinguished by its lovely waitresses and alligator pit out back, where Joe would daily entertain his patrons with the ritual of feeding time. [ReadOn]

On Oct. 26, 1965, Indianapolis police were called to a rundown house on East New York Street where they found the body of 16-year-old Sylvia Likens on a bare mattress in an upstairs bedroom. [ReadOn]

In sheer ferocity, the crimes were something new to residents of Athens, Georgia. On the night of August 15, 1987, three women -- 63-year-old Ann Morris, her 59-year-old sister, Sally Nicholson, and Sally's daughter Helen, 22 -- were hacked to death in a home in suburban Carr's Hill. [ReadOn]

John BARDGETT, a 25-year-old nurse who worked at Harborside-Northwood Nursing Home in Bedford, New Hampshire was arrested in September 2001 on second-degree assault charges. [ReadOn]

Born October 23, 1932, in Cumberland County, North Carolina, Margie Bullard would look back on her childhood as a cruel period of "permissible slavery," made worse by the attentions of a father who began molesting her at age thirteen. [ReadOn]

In 1995 Jack Barron moved from being a very unfortunate man to become a serial killer. It all started in 1992 when his wife, Irene, died mysteriously leaving Jack grief stricken. Eight months later his four year-old son, Jeremy, stopped breathing in his sleep. [ReadOn]

Bonnie Parker liked to write poetry about the exploits of her lover, Clyde Barrow, and she found his violence erotic.  Deputy Ted Hinton was one of the six officers who ambushed and shot the couple to death.  [ReadOn]

In 1977 and '78, New York homosexuals were terrorized by a series of "bag murders," in which six male victims were mutilated and dismembered , their remains wrapped in black plastic bags and dumped in the Hudson River. Some of the grisly fragments washed up on the New Jersey shore, others coming to ground near the World Trade Center. [ReadOn]

The car lot worker from Aberdeen was committed to state psychiatric hospital as a "sexual psychopath" following child molestations in 1967. Stabbed two teenage hitchhikers to death near Moclips in 1975. He remains a suspect in the 1969 disappearance of a woman he had dated.
Status: In prison in Washington.

Herb BAUMEISTER was the embodiment of the American dream. He built from scratch a chain of successful local thrift stores in Indianapolis and led a seemingly normal life as a husband and a devoted father of three. [ReadOn]

Herb BAUMEISTER was the embodiment of the American dream. He built from scratch a chain of successful local thrift stores in Indianapolis and led a seemingly normal life as a husband and a devoted father of three. [Weiterlesen]

Known in the late 40s as the "Lonely-Hearts Killers" for their lethal swindling of lovelorn widows answering personal adds. Raymond, although Hawaiian, billed himself as a sexy Latin Lover. Martha, tipping the scale at a whooping 280 pounds, was no buttercup of love. [ReadOn]

Bleached blonde barmaid Betty Lou Beets seemed to be very unlucky in her choice of husbands. Out of the five, four disappeared without trace and the other (number 3) left her after she planted a bullet in his back after a nasty fight. [ReadOn]

On the high prairie the Bender family -- John, his wife , son, and daughter Kate -- in 1871 built a small house. Partitioned in two rooms by a canvas cloth it had a table, stove and grocery shelves in front. [ReadOn]

From Court: ON DEATH ROW SINCE 11-03-88 DOB: 06-03-1956 DOC#: 886175 White Male Date of Murder: February 7, 1987 Victim(s): Delores Wells W/F/19 (No relationship to Benefiel) Method of Murder: asphyxia with superglue [ReadOn]

By his own admission, 39-year-old Robert Berdella was a strange character. The owner of Bob's Bizarre Bazaar in Kansas City, Missouri, Berdella carried business cards that advertised that he had "poison" in his head. [ReadOn]

New Yorkers are accustomed to reports of violent death in every form, from the mundane to the bizarre. They take it all in stride, accepting civic carnage as a price for living in the largest, richest city in America. But residents were unprepared for the commencement of an all-out reign of terror in July 1976. [ReadOn]

A black drifter from Fayetteville, North Carolina, Bernard attempted his first murder there on August 15, 1983. Accosting a drunken migrant worker, 58-year-old Manuel Diaz, Bernard shot him once in the head with a small-caliber pistol, afterward severing the victim's penis for good measure. [ReadOn]

BERNSON, produce salesman from Spokane is suspected of killing up to 30 Northwest women, Bernson stabbed a 15-year-old girl to death and buried her in a shallow grave in Richland. Authorities in Oregon also charged him for the 1978 murder of a Umatilla teenager, whose body was found in 1985. Status: In prison in Washington.

A more dangerous team of blood relatives was composed of the two cousins who came to be known as the Hillside Stranglers. October 17, 1977, Yolanda Washington, 19, was picked up,  strangled, and dumped near the entrance to Forest Lawn Hollywood Hills Cemetery.  [ReadOn]

Born in Staten Island, New York in 1940 Rich was the product of a typical serial killing upbringing. Regularly beaten by his alcoholic father, at the age of five he torched the family home. For the rest of his childhood he was bounced from psychiatric hospitals to reformatories. [ReadOn]

A rootless drifter, big Jake Bird would tell authorities that he was born December 14, 1901, "somewhere out in Louisiana where they ain't no post office." He started roaming in his nineteenth year and never settled anywhere for long, spending much of his time as a manual laborer and "gandy dancer" on various railroads. [ReadOn]

A devout Mormon, Arthur Bishop liked to spend an unnatural amount of time with children. After being charged for embezzlement in Utah, the former Eagle Scout changed his name and disappeared. [ReadOn]

Lawrence Bittaker was serving time for assault with a deadly weapon, in 1978, when he met Roy Norris at the California Men's Colony at San Luis Obispo. A convicted rapist, Norris recognized a soul-mate in Bittaker, and they soon became inseparable. [ReadOn]

Ten years before the first discovery of AIDS, the gay community in San Francisco was confronted with another lethal menace, wrought in human form. Between January 1974 and September 1975, the faceless stalker was responsible for seventeen attacks, with fourteen deaths, that baffled homicide investigators in the city by the bay. [ReadOn]

The rage that snuffed out seven lives in fifteen years began for Rudy Bladel as an economic twist of fate. The son of a Chicago railroad fireman, Rudy loved the trains from childhood, never seriously entertaining the idea of any other occupation. In Korea, during 1950, he was posted on a military train and saw his share of action from the rails. [ReadOn]

Authorities in Polk County, Texas, arrested 35-year-old Daniel Blank on November 14 for six slayings over the past two years in southeast Louisiana. Sheriff Jeff Wiley of Ascension Parish, La., said Blank confessed on videotape to stabbing, bludgeoning or shooting six people -- bosses, neighbors, and customers -- to pay for his gambling habit. [ReadOn]

The state Supreme Court on Tuesday overturned the death sentence for a Ross man convicted of killing his second wife in the couple's hot tub.
The court ordered Timothy Boczkowski, 48, to be sentenced to life in prison without parole for the Nov. 7, 1994, strangulation of his 36-year-old wife, Maryann. [ReadOn]

America's most prolific team of killers-for-profit were active in Philadelphia during the 1930s, claiming an estimated 30 to 50 victims before the ring's various members were apprehended. Students of the case, in retrospect, are prone to cite the gang's activities as evidence that modern homicide statistics may be woefully inaccurate. [ReadOn]

Oscar Ray BOLIN was convicted in 1986 of the brutal rapes and murders of three women and suspected of four other killings.
A former carnival worker, Bolin was found guilty of first-degree murder and false imprisonment in the November 1986 death of Stephanie Collins, 17. [ReadOn]

On the night of June 27, 1986, Bolton kidnapped the 2 1/2-year-old victim from a bedroom in her parents' house in Tucson. He took her to an abandoned taxi cab, undressedher, stabbed her in the chest once, and redressed her. Bolton left her to bleed to death, and her body was discovered on July 1, 1986, by some boys who were playing in the area.

Crimes & Victims:
Between December 1972 and June 1980 at least 44 young men and boys become victims of at least one unidentified “Freeway Killer” in seven Southern California counties.
Eleven of those victims killed prior to 1976 are known or suspected homosexuals, so the killer might be gay himself. [ReadOn]

Willie Bosket had committed over two thousand crimes in New York by the time he was fifteen, including stabbing several people.  The son of a convicted murderer, he never knew his father but revered him for his "manly" crime.  Just before he was sixteen, his crimes became more serious.  [ReadOn]

Gary has been charged with slaying six men along the East Coast in 1994. On May 28, 1999, a Jacksonville jury recommended the death sentence for 37-year-old Bowles. Once on the FBI's "Most Wanted" list as a serial killer of gay men, Bowles first received the death penalty in 1996 for the 1994 murder of Walter Jammell Hinton. [ReadOn]

Gail Smith, age 20, had been working as a waitress at a topless bar in Ft. Worth, Texas, but with salary and tips together, she had still not saved the money that she needed for a car. Accordingly, when she decided it was time to see her mother in Lake Meredith, 300 miles away, Gail chose her spot along the highway, stuck her thumb out, waiting for a ride. [ReadOn]

"Cowboy Mike," a man wanted in connection with the disappearances of four women, the shooting of another and two rapes, was captured July 20, 2001, after a one-hour chase that ended when a police dog dragged the fugitive to the bank of the Snake River. [ReadOn]

A native of rural Washington state, born in 1949, Thomas Braun lost his mother in early childhood as the result of a clumsy, illegal abortion. Left in the care of their alcoholic father , Braun and his younger sister were frequently locked in a truck for safekeeping while the old man made his rounds of local taverns. [ReadOn]

Gregory BREEDEN, believed to have killed at least 8 prostitutes in and around Kansas City, has only been charged with two murders. He confessed one of the killings to a cell mate in prison. He is currently being tried in Missouri for two murders. Conveniently Breeden is already serving a 14-year sentence for writing bad checks. [ReadOn]

A career criminal with 24 misdemeanor and felony arrests since his early teens, Bridges was described by New Orleans police as a hoodlum whose offenses covered "everything but treason." Facing trial on fresh charges of armed robbery, he was free on bail when officers stopped him for questioning on December 7, 1987 -- the day before his twenty-ninth birthday. [ReadOn]

Born around 1850, Joseph Briggen was a product of farming stock and he followed in the family tradition, working hard to scratch a living from his remote Sierra Morena Ranch, in northern California. All things considered, he had little to show for his labor. [ReadOn]

The first two victims credited to Henry Brisbon were James Schmidt, a Chicago businessman, and his fiancee, Dorothy Cerny, both 25. While traveling on Highway 57, in Cook County, on the night of June 3, 1973, Schmidt and Cerny were stopped by a gang of four men, dragged from their vehicle and forced to lie down on the grassy shoulder of the road. [ReadOn]

A convicted rapist from Gary, Indiana, Britt, 38, was charged with the abduction and murder of an 8-year-old girl and nine more killings. On November, 7, 1995, during an eight-hour confession following his arrest for the abduction of Sarah Lynn Paulsen, Britt told police about the other killings and where they could find the bodies. [ReadOn]

For seven weeks, between September and October 1987, Washington, D.C. was haunted by the specter of a prowling, voyeuristic gunman who apparently derived sadistic pleasure from attacking women or young couples in their homes. [ReadOn]

First arrested in February 1982, at age fifteen, for molesting an eight-year-old girl, within five years John Brooks was named by homicide detectives as "the largest one-man crime ring in recent New Orleans history." [ReadOn]

On September 7, 1986, 35-year-old Robert May, a divorced construction worker, left his Phoenix home to search for work in Houston, Texas. His car was found abandoned near a school in Bowie, Arizona, on September 8, and two days later, May was found outside of Bowie, in the desert, shot twice in the face. [ReadOn]

Born in June 1933, Charles Brown was the oldest of seven children in a Bedford, Indiana, family. He quit school after eighth grade, entering a "forced" marriage at age sixteen. The union produced four children, despite Brown's contention that he and his wife "never got along." Divorce was frequently discussed, but never pursued. [ReadOn]

... [ReadOn]

On June 12, 1987, three weeks after graduating from a local high school, Angela Fay Hackl disappeared from her hometown of Lone Rock, Wisconsin. Search parties scoured a two-county area after her car was recovered near Sauk City, twenty miles away, and her body was found on June 15, in the woods six miles west of Sauk City. [ReadOn]

In October 1960, 14-year-old Raymond Brown had his mind on sports. Specifically, he wanted football shoes, but he was short on cash. Instead of looking for a part-time job around his home, in Clay County, Alabama, he opted for burglary, selecting the home jointly occupied by his grandmother, great-grandmother, and great-aunt as his target. [ReadOn]

A drifter who resided in twenty-three states during his last decade of freedom, Vernon Brown had settled in Indianapolis by 1980, serving time for molesting a 12-year-old girl. On August 25, nine-year-old Kimberly Campbell was found, raped and strangled, in a vacant house owned by Brown's grandmother. [ReadOn]

Born in South Dakota during January 1939, Brudos moved to California with his family, as a child. He grew up with a deep, abiding hatred for his domineering mother and a strange, precocious lust for women's shoes. Discovering a pair of high-heels at the local dump, he brought them home, where they were confiscated and burned by his mother . [ReadOn]

A native of Camden, New Jersey, Joseph Bryan first ran afoul of the law in 1958, at age nineteen, when he abducted two small boys, tied them to a tree, and sexually molested them. Committed to a Camden County mental hospital, Bryan was diagnosed as schizophrenic, once informing doctors that he liked to see little boys "tied up and screaming." [ReadOn]

March 19, 2004:
The Wichita Eagle receives a letter with copies of the drivers license of Vicki WEGERLE and three fotos of the crime scene of her murder. First thinking about a bad joke, it soon becomes obvious, that the incredible happened: [ReadOn]

Dubbed "The Black Widow" for preying on her family and leaving a dead husband, boyfriend and son in her trail, Judy Buenoano was executed on Florida's temperamental Old Sparky on March 30, 1998. [ReadOn]

Born in New York City on November 13, 1960, Bullock had a history of trouble with the law that dated from his adolescent years. In February 1977, he was arrested in Monroe, New York, on charges of criminal mischief and petty larceny. [ReadOn]

Ted BUNDY was handsome, charming, intelligent, self-assured, with a brilliant future, and deadlier than a rattlesnake. Using his good looks, he was able to invisibly abduct and kill his victims and continue with his seemingly charmed life. [ReadOn]

Eugene Butler had been dead a full two years before his crimes were finally exposed, discovery of skeletal remains beneath his rural home outside Niagara, North Dakota, writing finis to an eerie chapter in the region's local history. [ReadOn]