Top 20 most famous serial killers in the world and their zodiac signs

Top 20 most famous serial killers in the world and their zodiac signs

Serial killers are known for their heinous acts of killing two or more people knowingly and willingly. They enjoy killing for rituals or selfish gains. Some of these people died following their gruesome acts. The following list explores the top 20 most famous serial killers in the world and their zodiac signs.

most famous serial killers in the world
Alexander Pichushkin, Jeffrey Dahmer, and Andrei Chikatilo(from left to right). Photo: canva.com. (Modified by author)
Source: UGC

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Key takeaways

  • The most common sign in the list is Pisces
  • The least common signs are Sagittarius, Virgo, Scorpio and Capricorn, with only one appearance each.
  • Aries and Leo do not appear on the list.

Most famous serial killers in the world and their zodiac signs

We used data from WorldAtlas, Serial Killer Shop, and People's profiles to compile this list. However, a topic such as the most famous serial killers is highly subjective.

NameZodiac Sign
Ted BundySagittarius
Jack the RipperGemini
Ed GeinVirgo
John Wayne GacyPisces
Jeffrey DahmerGemini
Aileen WuornosPisces
Irma GreseLibra
Dennis RadarPisces
Zodiac KillerPisces
Brooklyn VampireTaurus
Pedro Alonso LopezLibra
Richard RamirezPisces
Belle Sorenson GunnessScorpio
Gary RidgwayAquarius
Tommy Lynn SellsCancer
H.H. HolmesTaurus
Ahmad SuradjiCapricorn
Luis GaravitoAquarius
Alexander PichushkinPisces
Andrei ChikatiloLibra

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Most of these serial killers are dangerous to the public and kept in some of the worse prisons in the world. Here is a recap of these famous murderers.

20. Andrei Chikatilo: Libra

Andrei Chikatilo smiling while behind bars
Notorious Ukrainian cannibalistic serial killer Andrei Chikatilo behind bars in Rostov on the Don, Russia. Photo: Georges DeKeerle/Sygma
Source: Getty Images

Chikatilo was a Soviet serial killer, nicknamed the Butcher of Rostov, the Red Ripper, and the Rostov Ripper. In his active years between 1978 and 1990, he sexually assaulted, murdered and mutilated approximately 52 women. After being captured in 1992, he was ordered to be killed by a firing squad in 1994.

19. Alexander Pichushkin: Aries

Alexander Pichushkin
Alexander Pichushkin sits in the bullet-proof defendants' cage at the Moscow City Court, 29 October 2007, on the day of his sentencing. Photo: Maxim Marmur/AFP
Source: Getty Images

Pichushkin, also known as the Bitsa Park Maniac and the Chessboard Killer, is a Russian serial killer. He is believed to have killed upwards of 49 people between 1992 and 2006 in Southwest Moscow. His targets were homeless men whom he lured to his house with vodka.

18. Luis Garavito: Aquarius

Garavito posing for a headshot
Head-on mugshot of serial killer Luis Alfredo Garavito, taken by the Colombian National Police after his arrest in 1999. Photo: The Colombian National Registry
Source: UGC

Cubillos, also known as Tribilín or La Bestia, is a Colombian paederast, sexual predator, necrophiliac, and serial killer. In 1999, he admitted to the sexual assault, torture and murder of 138 boys and teenagers.

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He was found guilty on 139 counts, which should amount to 1,853 years in prison. However, Columbian law limits it to 30, which he was sentenced to in 1999.

17. Ahmad Suradji: Capricorn

Ahmad Suradji at his court hearing
Ahmad Suradji at his court hearing. Photo: @Morbidful. (Modified by author)
Source: Twitter

Also known as Nasib Kelewang and Datuk Maringgi, he was a serial killer from Indonesia who confessed to the murders of 42 girls and women from 1986 to 1997. Suradji's victims, who were between the ages of 11 and 30, were buried in the ground up to their waists and then strangled as part of a ritual.

Bodies were found in a sugarcane field with their heads facing his house. He believed that this would give him more power. Suradji was sentenced to death by a firing squad and executed in 2008.

16. H.H. Holmes: Taurus

Two portraits of American pharmacist and convicted serial killer Herman Webster Mudgett
Two portraits (one a profile) of American pharmacist and convicted serial killer Herman Webster Mudgett (better known by his alias H.H. Holmes, 1861 - 1896), mid to late. Photo: Chicago History Museum
Source: Getty Images

Chicago has had its share of killers, but perhaps none more haunting than H.H. Holmes, the pharmacist who turned a hotel into a torture castle. Herman Webster Mudgett, better known as Dr. Henry Howard Holmes or H. H. Holmes, was an American serial killer active from December 1891 to November 1894.

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15. Tommy Lynn Sells: Cancer

Tommy Lynn Sells posing for his mugshot
Tommy Lynn Sells posing for his mugshot. Photo: @Historia Fotografią Pisana. (Modified by author)
Source: Twitter

Sells was an American serial killer. He was convicted of two murders, one of which earned him the death penalty and was eventually executed. Authorities believe he committed a total of 22 murders. He was arrested after he broke into the room of 10-year-old Krystal Surles, cut her throat, and left her for dead.

14. Gary Ridgway: Aquarius

Gary Ridgway prepares to leave the courtroom
Gary Ridgway prepares to leave the courtroom where he was sentenced in King County Washington Superior Court on December 18, 2003, in Seattle, Washington. Photo: Josh Trujillo-Pool
Source: Getty Images

Who is the sickest serial killer ever? Also known as the Green River Killer, he would dump his victims in the Green River. He was initially convicted of 48 separate murders. However, he was arrested in 2001 and confessed to murdering approximately 70 women in the 1980s and 1990s.

The presiding judge exercised leniency in his sentencing since he helped the investigators in locating the bodies of his victims. As such, he evaded the death penalty. Regardless, he was convicted of 49 murders and sentenced to life imprisonment.

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13. Belle Sorenson Gunness: Scorpio

Belle Gunness poses for a photo
Belle Gunness poses with her children for a photo(L). Belle Gunness poses alone for a photograph(R). Photo: flickr.com. (Modified by author)
Source: UGC

Belle Gunness, born Brynhild Paulsdatter, was an American serial killer of Norwegian descent active in Indiana and Illinois between 1884 and 1908. Belle killed several of her partners and children for life insurance money. Although the authorities found her body in the fire remains in her family farmhouse, many speculate she framed her death and took off.

12. Richard Ramirez: Pisces

Murder Suspect Richard Ramirez Showing Left Palm
Richard Ramirez flashes his left palm showing a pentagram, a symbol of satanic worship, at his former attorney Joseph Gallego. Photo: Bettmann
Source: Getty Images

Ramirez dubbed the Valley Intruder and the Night Stalker, was an American serial killer, sexual offender, kidnapper, child abuser, and burglar convicted in 1989. Operating in Los Angeles, he was notorious for breaking into people's homes and murdering them with various weapons, including knives, handguns, and even a tyre iron.

11. Pedro Alonso López: Libra

Pedro Alonso Lopez at his court hearing
Pedro Alonso Lopez at his court hearing. Photo:@planeta_novo. (Modified by author)
Source: Twitter

Also known as Monster Of The Andes, he claims to have sexually assaulted and murdered at least 300 women during his killing escapades in South America. More than 50 of his victims were younger than 12 years. He was later arrested in Ecuador after attempting to kidnap a 12-year-old girl in 1980.

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Upon arrest, Pedro confessed to murdering over 200 in Ecuador and many more murders in Colombia and Peru. He was sentenced to 16 years in prison, the maximum during those days. He was released two years early.

After release, he was deported to Colombia where he was sent to a mental asylum. However, he was declared sane and released in 1998. His current whereabouts remain unknown.

10. The Brooklyn Vampire: Taurus

Albert Fish poses for a potrait
Albert Fish takes a photo in 1903. Photo: Wikimedia Commons
Source: UGC

Albert Fish was a serial killer who was active in the early 1900s. He was eventually caught and prosecuted on charges of murder, sexual assault, and cannibalism. He devoured three children and purported to have murdered approximately 100 more. He was also known as the Moon Maniac Gray Man, the Brooklyn Vampire, the Werewolf of Wysteria, and The Boogey Man.

9. The Zodiac Killer: Unknown

Poster of the Zodiac Killer
Poster of the Zodiac Killer. Photo: lawyerscorner.com
Source: UGC

The killer operated in California in the late 60s. He attacked at least three young couples and a male cab driver. Two of his victims survived. He often sent taunting messages to regional newspapers, threatening bombings and killing sprees if his messages were not printed.

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He included four cyphers and cryptograms in his letters, two of which were decrypted in 1969 and 2020. He claimed to have killed 37 victims, but the newspapers confirmed only 7. The case file is still open.

8. Dennis Rader: Pisces

Dennis Radar looking on in court
Dennis Rader sits in court on the first day of his sentencing at the Sedgwick County Courthouse on August 17, 2005, in Wichita, Kansas. Photo: Rader-Pool
Source: Getty Images

He put on the facade of a loving father, husband, and company man, but he dabbled as the evasive BTK killer, who killed entire families and taunted police while at it. He started in 1974 when he invaded a family home and murdered both parents and two children. Murders which exhibited a similar MO followed.

What set him apart from other serial killers is that he was able to subdue his urge to kill for years at a time; from 1977 to 1985, and from 1987 to 1991. After his 10th kill, he never killed again.

Surprisingly, BTK wasn't apprehended for another 14 years. He was eventually caught in 2004 after he resumed sending letters to the police.

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7. Irma Grese: Libra

Irma Grese standing in a courtyard alongside Josef Kramer
Irma Grese(L) standing in the courtyard of the Prisoner of War cage at Celle with Josef Kramer(R). Both were convicted of war crimes and sentenced to death. Photo: Imperial War Museums
Source: UGC

Irma Ilse Ida Grese, nicknamed the beautiful beast of Auschwitz was born on 7 October 1923 in Wrechen, Weimar Republic. She became a prison guard in several German concentration camps such as Auschwitz II-Birkenau, Ravensbruck and Bergen-Belsen, where she committed numerous atrocities against inmates.

Historians believe she could have murdered as many as 18,000 people, although finding a definitive figure is challenging. So heinous were her acts, that she was one of the few female officers to be executed during the Belsen trials.

Irma was only 22 when she was put to death, making her the youngest woman to be executed under British law in the 20th century.

6. Aileen Wuornos: Pisces

Aileen Wuornos in prison
Aileen Wuornos in prison. Photo: Florida DOC
Source: Getty Images

Wuornos was an abused child. She became a sex worker in Florida. Then, during 1989 and 1990, she shot, killed and robbed seven of her clients. During her trial, Wuornos claimed that the clients tried to sexually assault her, prompting her to kill them in self-defence.

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She got the death penalty for six of the murders and was executed in 2002.

5. Jeffrey Dahmer: Gemini

Jeffrey Dahmer at the courtroom
Suspected serial killer Jeffrey L. Dahmer enters the courtroom of Judge Jeffrey A. Wagner on 06 August 1991. Photo: Eugene Garcia/AFP
Source: Getty Images

Who is the hottest serial killer? Dahmer started killing in 1978, just 18 years old. He was not arrested for murder until 1991, after a would-be victim escaped and led police back to Dahmer's Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Dahmer also indulged in necrophilia and cooking the body parts of his victims. He was sentenced to 15 terms of life imprisonment in 1992. He was beaten to death by a fellow prisoner at the Columbia Correctional Institution two years later.

4. John Wayne Gacy: Pisces

John Wayne Gacy posing for his mug shot
John Wayne Gacy on Dec. 21, 1978, at the Des Plaines Police Department. Photo: Des Plaines Police Department/Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service
Source: Getty Images

Gacy's murder spree started in 1972 when he murdered 16-year-old Timothy McCoy. After the murder, he claimed to have climaxed, and from that point on, he chased the same euphoria with 32 more victims.

A successful businessman, children's entertainer and community worker by day. By night, a sadistic murderous sexual predator with an unlicensed graveyard beneath his home.

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3. Ed Gein: Virgo

Des Plaines Police Department
John Wayne Gacy on Dec. 21, 1978, at the Des Plaines Police Department. Photo: Des Plaines Police Department/Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service
Source: Getty Images

Gein, also known as the 'Plainfield Ghoul' had a traumatic childhood. His mentally ill mother and drunkard father did not provide the best start to life. After the death of his parents, he remained alone in their house.

At the age of 40, Gein started going to local graveyards, where he would exhume bodies of recently deceased women, steal them and fashion mementoes from their skin and bones. He has inspired many popular films such as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

2. Jack the Ripper: Unknown

Jack the ripper being caught while holding a woman by the hair and a knife on his other hand
A fanciful engraving showing Jack The Ripper being caught red-handed, grasping one of his victims by the hair and holding a knife. Photo: Hulton Archive
Source: Getty Images

Jack the Ripper is the famous tale of England's most notorious serial killer that captures the imagination almost 140 years on. The killer appeared in London's Whitechapel district in 1888 and murdered five women, all prostitutes, and mutilated their corpses.

In addition, the killer mocked the community and the police by sending letters outlining the acts. Despite his heinous acts, he was never caught.

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1. Ted Bundy: Sagittarius

Mass Murderer Theodore Bundy with Lawyers in the Courtroom
Theodore Bundy (C), seated in court. Photo: Bettmann
Source: Getty Images

Who is the most famous serial killer in 2021? Better known as The Lady Killer, this charming, handsome young deviant mainly targeted college-age women, from Washington and Oregon to Utah and Colorado.

Ted gained attention when he acted as his lawyer during what is believed to have been the first televised murder trial. He confessed to more than 30 murders and was eventually executed by electric chair in 1989.

FAQs

Below are questions about serial killers. The questions are thoroughly researched to give correct info. See them below!

What is the most favourite last meal on death row?

Famous serial killers' last meals include fried chicken and chicken fried steak, which are popular southern dishes. However, ice cream and milkshakes topped the list. Almost every person, if they requested dessert, wanted some ice cream.

Who is the youngest serial killer?

Currently, Amardeep Sada holds the title of the youngest serial killer in the world. His first murder happened when he was only eight years old. Sada was released in 2016 upon his eighteenth birthday, but his whereabouts are unknown. He would now be 22 years old.

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Which Zodiac sign has the most serial killers?

After a study, it was found that Pisces, Cancer, Scorpio and Sagittarius have the most serial killers, accounting for almost 40% of serial killers.

What Zodiac sign is most likely to kill themselves?

Suicide is a sensitive matter that may be influenced by a variety of different reasons. As such, there is no definitive study that has been able to create a link between zodiac signs and suicide prevalence.

Which serial killers have the Zodiac sign of cancer?

Popular serial killers with cancer zodiac signs include; Genene Jones(2-60 victims) and Carl Panzram (5-22 victims).

How many Leo serial killers are there?

Popular Leo serial killers include; John “The Acid Bath Killer” Haigh(6-9 victims), Myra “The Moors Murderer” Hindley(5 victims) and Anthony Sowell (11 victims). However, determining the exact number of Leo serial killers is difficult.

What is the Zodiac sign of Charles Manson?

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Charles Manson's Zodiac sign is Scorpio.

Which Zodiac sign remains single?

Aries are the most likely to remain single since they crave independence and find long-term relationships boring.

Which Zodiac sign is shy?

Virgo and cancer are some of the shyest zodiac signs.

Above is a list of the top 20 famous serial killers in the world and their zodiac signs. The majority of them are already dead, and others are serving life imprisonment. You can watch movies about famous serial killers and get to know the kind of life they lived.

In other news, Briefly.co.za highlighted 10 prisons where the most dangerous criminals are held worldwide. There are numerous prisons in the world, and all vary in terms of size and amenities provided.

Some prisons are designed to house the worst prisoners in the world to keep the community safe. Are you aware of some of the most dreaded convicts in the world? Read here to find out more!

Source: Briefly News

Authors:
Bennett Yates avatar

Bennett Yates (Lifestyle writer) Bennett Yates is a content creator with over five years of working experience in journalism and copywriting. He graduated from the University of Nairobi (2017) with a Bachelor's in Information Technology. In 2023, Bennett finished the AFP course on Digital Investigation Techniques. He started working for Briefly in 2019. You can reach him via email at bennetyates@gmail.com.