Born Herman Webster Mudgett, Dr. Holmes started his criminal career
as a medical student by stealing corpses from the University of
Michigan. He used the corpses to collect insurance money from policies
taken out under fictitious names.

When he moved to Chicago he started a drugstore empire from which
he made a fortune. He built a hundred-room mansion complete with gas
chambers, trap doors, acid vats, lime pits, fake walls and secret
entrances. During the 1893 World's Fair he rented rooms to visitors. He
then killed most of his lodgers and continued his insurance fraud
scheme. He also lured women to his "torture castle" with the promise of
marriage. Instead, he would force them to sign over their savings, then
throw them down an elevator shaft and gas them to death. In the
basement of the castle he dismembered and skinned his prey and
experimented with their corpses.

When police grew suspicious about H.H's activities, he torched the
castle and fled. In the burnt hulk of the building, authorities found the
remains of over two hundred people. H.H. was caught when one of his
insurance schemes was unravelled by Pinkerton detectives. He was
hanged on May 7, 1896, after one the first sensational crime trial in
America. Not only was Herman the first American serial killer he was
also, according to author Scheckter, the first "celebrity psycho." Although
he never had the historical presence of his contemporary Jack the
Ripper, he did leave behind an impressive trail of blood unequaled for
almost eighty years.

Born in Colombia's western coffee-growing region, Gavarito was the
oldest of seven children. He was repeatedly beaten by his father and
raped by two male neighbors. Garavito was also a heavy alcoholic, and
was treated for depression and suicidal tendencies.

Garavito apparently committed his first murder in 1992. Authorities were
unaware of the alleged serial killer until 25 bodies were found in the
western city of Pereira. The victims -- mostly boys between 8 and 16 -
were found with their throats slit. Some showed signs of torture and
rape.

On October 30, 1999, Colombian announced that Luis Alfredo Gavarito
confessed to raping, torturing and killing 140 children in a five-year
killing spree. "Luis Alfredo Garavito has admitted the murder of about
140 children of which we have so far found 114 skeleton," chief
prosecutor Alfonso Gomez told a news conference.

A German laundry delivery man, Bruno offed at least 80 women between
1928 and 1943. When Nazi officials finally caught up with his lethal
hobby, they shipped him off to a research hospital in Vienna where he
was used as a human guinea pig by Nazi doctors. When they were done
with their experiments, Bruno was executed by lethal injection.

Chikatilo - a sexually impotent dirty old man from hell - lived in Rostov,
500 miles from Moscow, where he preyed mostly on children. He
stalked many of his victims in train and bus stations, and had a
penchant for disembowelment and mutilation. He was also a cannibal
and a sadist. His macabre twelve-year killing spree was finally
uncovered in 1992.

While he was on trial, his gory descriptions, psychotic behavior and
litany of horrors gave the Soviet public their first taste of serial
mayhem. "I am a mistake of nature, a mad beast," he said at his 1994
trial where people fainted when they heard how he boiled and ate the
sawn-off testicles or nipples of his victims. Andrei was executed by firing
squad in prison on February 14, 1994.

A Sixteenth Century Hungarian Countess, Erszebet enjoyed bathing in
blood. This deviant fawn of royalty believed that regular blood baths
would halt the aging process. Estimates of the number of girls that were
slaughtered for her 10 years of beauty treatments vary from 40 to as
much as 600.

The bloody Countess, the widow of a celebrated Hungarian war hero
and descendent of the legendary despot Vlad the Impaler, led a life
immersed in black magic and sadism. She once had the mouth of a
servant sewn shut for being too noisy. In January 1611, after countless
rumors about her behavior, a group led by Count Thurzo - Erzsebet's
cousin - entered her Castle Csejthe and uncovered a blood-letting in
progress.

In order to protect the family name, at the Count's insistance, Erzsebet
was never actually "charged" with any crime, although he did have her
put under "house arrest." In fact, her royal highness was literally sealed
into her tower by masons. The consulate agreed largely because the
government had a huge debt it would have had to pay off should they
charge her.

Two of her accomplices in her orgies of horror had their fingers removed
before being thrown on the fire. Another - the only male - was beheaded
then thrown on the fire. The countess died on August 21, 1614, three
years after she was sealed in her bedroom. Perhaps her elixir of youth
had been working all along.

Unlike most other serial killers, he never raped his victims - instead he
submitted them to slow, painful deaths. Stano was arrested 1978 and
charged with the December, 1973, murder of Cathy Lee Scharf, a 17-
year-old hitchhiker from Port Orange, Florida.

Stano confessed picking up the teenager while she was hitchhiking on
U.S. 1 in Port Orange and choking her repeatedly over several hours.
After finally killing the girl, he dumped her body in a drainage ditch,
cleaned up and went roller skating. Hunters found her decomposed
body at the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge near Titusville on
January 19, 1974.

A surprisingly intelligent and gentle mannered Moses Sithole is
allegedly South Africa's worst serial killer. The suspected Gauteng serial
killer, Sithole was charged in the Pretoria Supreme Court with 38
charges of murder, 40 charges of rape and six of robbery. Between 1994
and 1995 he allegedly strangled women in the Pretoria, Johannesburg
and East Rand areas. Most victims were lured to secluded fields where
Sithole allegedly assaulted, raped and strangled them with their own
underwear or belts.

The series of murders started in June 1994, shortly after Sithole had
served house arrest for rape. Between 1994 and 1995 South African
authorities were alarmed by the growing number of dead women
appearing around Pretoria and Johannesburg. Several of the women
were left with their hands tied behind their backs. One woman was
blindfolded. Many were found with their heads covered with clothing.

Sithole officially became South Africa's worst serial killer On December
5, 1997. when he was found guilty of 38 murders and 40 rapes. He was
sentenced to 2,410 year in jail.

"The Sadist King". The numbers speak for themselves. As a kid, Henry
was the poster child of the "Future Serial Killer Club." His alcoholic
father, called "No Legs" because of a chance encounter with a freight
train, killed himself after repeatedly being humiliated by his abusive wife.
When little Henry sliced an eye while playing with a knife with his brother,
his bootlegging, prostitute mother -- Viola Lucas -- left his gashed orb
unattended for days until it eventually withered and had to be removed by
a doctor. Once mom beat him so severely with a piece of wood that he
lay in a semi-conscious state for three days before Viola's boyfriend
decide to take him to a local hospital. Another time, she cruelly decided
to send Hank to school in a dress and with his hair curled.

Years later, in a drunken binge, Henry stuck a knife in his mother's back
and proceeded to rape her dead corpse. Later, like on many other
occasions, he recanted his act of inscestuous necrophilia. He got 40
years for matricide, but was out after 10. Free again, Henry launched his
stellar career as the nation's most notorious random killer...

Pedro was known as the "Monster of the Andes" after the impressive
numbers of hits he tallied in his three-nation killing spree. A native of
Colombia, his prostitute mother kicked him out of their home at age
eight for fondling his younger sister. Adding insult to injury he was then
picked up by a pedophile and sodomized against his will. By the time he
was eighteen he was gang banged in prison and retaliated by killing
three of his assailants.

Upon his release he started killing young girls with glee and impunity. By
1978 he claimed to have bagged more than 100 girls in Peru. After a
brush with an angry village mob he moved his activities to Colombia and
Ecuador where his blood lust averaged about three kills a week. He
found killing Ecuadorian girls quite enjoyable because they were "more
gentle and trusting, more innocent." Authorities attributed the rash of
disappearing girls to active slavery or prostitution rings in the area.

In 1980 a flash flood uncovered the first of his victims. When he was
arrested he told his interrogators the frightening tale of his reign of
death. At first authorities were skeptical, but all doubts disappeared
when he quickly produced more than fifty graves. It is widely believed that
three hundred hits is a low estimate for this most prolific serial killer.

A Fifteenth Century French war hero, Gilles was also one of medieval
Europe's worst killers. An ally of Joan of Arc during the Hundred Year
War, de Rais was instrumental in driving the English out of France. In
his later years, after he was named Marshal of France by King Charles
VII, he settled in his estates in Brittany, where he turned his heroic
impulses towards torture and murder. He enjoyed killing mostly young
boys, whom he would sodomize before and after decapitation. When he
wasn't feeling up to the task he enjoyed watching his servants butcher
the boys and masturbated over their entrails.

Because he was a baron, no one took note of the disappearing children
around his castle. A great patron of the arts, Gilles also enjoyed
practicing black magic and alchemy. His reign of terror came to an end
when the Duke of Brittany dug up the mutilated remains of 50 boys in his
castle. He confessed to 140 killings but it is believed that the body count
could have been as high as 300. On October 26, 1440, Gilles was
simultaneously burned and hanged. His two servant accomplices were
simply burned alive.

When he was a young boy Pee Wee watched a cobra eat a live rat at a
carnival. According to a later confession he penned, that was the first
time he felt attracted to violence. Dubbed America's meanest killer, Pee
Wee was always in trouble with the law. He spent most of his youth in
and out of reform school and later prison. Because of his pint-size, Pee
Wee had to be the "girlfriend" of older, more powerful prisoners. He
soon put an end to it by killing a highly regarded inmate while the man
was taking a shit, making him a jailhouse legend for the rest of his stay.

In 1969, after being released from prison, Pee Wee got back to killing at
an alarming rate. He made a distinction between his "coastal kills," -
people he found while driving around the roadways of the American
South that he killed for pleasure - and his "serious murders," - people he
knew that he killed for specific reasons. Aside from killing, Pee Wee had
a thriving business fencing stolen cars. He operated his fencing
business out of several properties around the Carolinas. There he also
slaughtered many of his prey. His other favorite hunting grounds were
the coastal highways, where every six weeks, he went hunting to quell
his feelings of "bother-someness."

In the early '80s, Pee Wee was named the "Meanest Man in America" for
killing another inmate while in Maximum Security. For his fearless
homicidal stunt, Pee Wee was given the death penalty. He was fried on
September 6, 1991. His total hits might well have been over two
hundred, but law enforcement sources found it impossible to verify all
his claims. In the excellent post-mortem auto-biography, "Final Truth,"
Pee Wee waxed poetic about how he had "a special mind" that gave
him "permission to kill."

Straight out of the he's-such-a-nice-guy file, Johnny was the type of man
who liked to dress in a homemade Pogo the Clown outfit to entertain
kids. A lonely and sadistic contractor, Johnny also liked to entertain
young boys privately in a very different fashion. The prototypical
organized killer, he had all aspects of the murder worked out before
each kill. Once he entered his murderous fantasy, there was no turning
back.

He enjoyed handcuffing his victims, anally raping them, beating them to
a pulp, offering to make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, reciting
verses from the Bible and strangling them to death. In 1978 he was
tracked down by the police in Chicago. Thirty bodies were found buried
in the crawl space underneath his house, explaining his wife's
complaints about the constant stench. As a prisoner, Johnny Boy started
a new career as an artist, painting mostly colorful clown pictures, which
have been shown in galleries nationwide. He was executed by lethal
injection in 1994.