1800s serial killers

The discussion began regarding the ten people who were reported missing, including a well-known Independence physician named Dr. William H. With the full realization that there truly was a major problem in their township, the group decided to search every farmstead between Big Hill Creek and Drum Creek. When most of the attendees volunteered to have their premises searched, the Benders remained silent.

Sometime later, Billy Tole, a neighbor of the Benders, noticed that the Bender Inn was abandoned and their farm animals unfed. York, of Fort Scott. When the men arrived at the property, they found the cabin empty of food, clothing, and personal possessions. They were also met by a terrible smell inside the abandoned inn. A trap door, nailed shut, was discovered in the floor of the cabin. Prying it open, the men found a six-foot deep hole that was filled with clotted blood, causing the terrible odor.

However, there were no bodies in the hole. Finally, the men physically moved the entire cabin to the side and began to search beneath, but no bodies were found there either. Continuing, they began to dig around the cabin, especially in an area the Benders had utilized as a vegetable garden and orchard. At the site of a freshly stirred depression in the earth, they found the first body, buried head downward with its feet scarcely covered. The corpse was that of Dr.

York, his skull bludgeoned and his throat cut from ear to ear. The digging continued the next day and nine other bodies and numerous dismembered body parts were found, including a woman and a little girl. Word of the gruesome murders spread fast and thousands of people flocked to the site, including news reporters from as far away as New York and Chicago.

The Bender cabin was ripped apart by gruesome souvenir hunters, right down to the bloody bricks that lined the cellar. Bit by bit, the story of the Benders was pieced together. The Benders were obviously not what they appeared. Ma Bender and Kate would then rifle the body for money pushing him through the trap door into the hole below the cabin, where Kate would slit his throat. During the night, the body would then be buried in the garden behind the house. Their downfall was the murder of a father and daughter named Loncher, and that of Dr.

William York, who had come looking for the missing pair. In the winter of , Mr. Loncher and his daughter had left Independence for Iowa but were never heard from again. In the spring of , Dr. York took it upon himself to go looking for the Lonchers, stopping at the homesteads along the trail to ask questions.

Though he reached Fort Scott unscathed and started to return to Independence about March 8th, he never reached home.

York had two brothers, one living in Fort Scott, and the other in Independence. Both knew of his travel plans and when he failed to return home, an all-out search began for the missing doctor. Colonel A. York, leading a contingency of some 50 men began to question every traveler along the trail and to stop at the area homesteads.

One of those places was the Bender Inn. York had stopped at their place but, convinced the search party that he had left and was probably waylaid by Indians. It was only a few days later that the homestead was found abandoned and the search party began to discover the grisly remains of the bodies.

York and the people he had been searching for — Mr. Loncher and his daughter, just seven or eight years old. Of the discovery of her remains, the Kansas City Times reported:. One arm was broken. The breastbone had been driven in. The right knee had been wrenched from its socket and the leg doubled up under the body. Nothing like this sickening series of crimes had ever been recorded in the whole history of the country. McCrotty, and John Geary, as well as an unidentified male and female.

Dismembered parts of several other victims were also discovered, but, could never be identified. Four other bodies with crushed skulls and slit throats were also found outside the property in Drum Creek and on the surrounding prairie. Because some of the travelers were carrying nothing of value, it was widely speculated that the Benders killed simply for the bloody thrill of it. Three years before his arrest—and with several murders already under his belt—Dahmer was convicted of drugging and sexually molesting a young teenager.

After serving only a year, he was released and continuing his killing binge, which focused almost entirely on young men of color. In , Dahmer was sentenced to years in jail, but was killed by a fellow inmate just two years later. Handsome, well-educated and brimming with charm, Ted Bundy seemed the unlikeliest of serial killers. Which made his decade-long, multi-state killing spree all the more surprising—and to some, appealing.

Following a difficult adolescence, Bundy graduated from the University of Washington—and soon embarked on his murderous spree, killing his first victim in Seattle in Focusing primarily on attractive college co-eds, Bundy committed a series of murders across the Pacific Northwest.

He continued on to Utah and Colorado, killing several more women before being arrested. Despite being convicted of kidnapping, he managed to escape police custody not once, but twice, while awaiting trial in Colorado. He moved to Florida, where he killed several members of a sorority and his final victim, a year-old girl who he raped and murdered.

When Bundy was finally apprehended while driving a stolen car a week after his last murder, his trial quickly became a media sensation. It was the first murder trial to be fully televised, and featured Bundy front-and-center acting as one of his own defense attorneys.

He became a media star, welcoming journalists to his cell, receiving letters of admiration from lovelorn fans and even marrying one of them and providing an endless list of clues about additional murders he may have committed, in the hopes of delaying his execution. The unidentified madman lured prostitutes into darkened squares and side streets before slitting their throats and sadistically mutilating their bodies with a carving knife.

That summer and fall, five victims were found butchered in the downtrodden East End district, sparking a media frenzy and citywide manhunt. A number of letters were allegedly sent by the killer to the London Metropolitan Police Service also known as Scotland Yard , taunting officers about his gruesome activities and speculating on murders to come. After taking his final victim in November, the killer seemed to disappear like a ghost.

The case was finally closed in , but Jack the Ripper has remained an enduring source of fascination. Over possible suspects have been proposed. American pharmacist and convicted serial killer Herman Webster Mudgett, better known by his alias H. Some rooms were equipped with hidden peepholes, gas lines, trap doors and soundproofed padding, while others featured secret passages, ladders and hallways that led to dead ends. There was also a greased chute that led to the basement, where Holmes had installed a surgical table, a furnace and even a medieval rack.

He then either disposed of the bodies in his furnace or skinned them and sold the skeletons to medical schools. At the same time, Holmes worked insurance scams—collecting money from life insurance companies.

Holmes was finally caught when one of his co-conspirators tipped off the police after Holmes failed to deliver his pay-out. Starting in the s, Barraza knocked on the doors of Mexico City's elderly women, pretending to be a social worker. Once inside, she grabbed a sock, piece of string or phone cord—whatever was handy—and strangled her victims to death until blood oozed from their ears. Capture: In , after strangling year-old Ana Maria Reyes with a stethoscope, Barraza fled from the scene, only to be captured close by.

Her prints matched those at 10 of approximately 40 crime scenes attributed to La Mataviejitas. It took police a long time to find her because they were unsure if she was a man or a woman—or a man dressed as a woman, or a woman dressed as a man.

Her broad shoulders and the force she used to cause blood to seep from victims' ears made police think she was a man. Estimated Body Count: Police found 12 babies linked to Dyer, but could only confirm she killed six. They believed she murdered as many as Story: In Victorian England, when a single woman found herself in a family way, she searched for a baby farmer, who raised the child. In the late s, women answered ads placed by Amelia Dyer, a married woman in her 50s who lived with her Christian husband in the Thames Valley region, and would raise the babies no one saw her husband because they were separated.

As soon as Dyer returned to her flat, she would strangle the infant. Placing the baby in a bag, she dumped her victim into the Thames. Capture: As bargemen rowed across the river on March 30, , they spotted a package. When they opened it, they discovered a dead infant girl. As the police examined the paper, they spotted a faintly written address. Fearing the murderer would run, the police organized a sting operation where a female pretended to need Dyer's services.

When Dyer opened the door for the woman, she found the police instead. The police found 12 infants in the river, many with the same string around their necks. Her house was full of baby items and as her crimes were publicized more women came forward saying they gave her their babies.

Punishment: Death. On June 10, , Dyer died by hanging at the Newgate Gallows. Estimated Body Count: Eight—although she had 10 children, two died of natural causes.

On April 7, Noe rushed her newborn to the hospital—he wasn't breathing. Doctors attributed it to sudden infant death syndrome SIDS. Noe had a second child, Elizabeth, in September In February , Noe returned to the hospital, clutching a dead infant. SIDS again. There weren't any marks on the child, broken bones, or bruises, or signs of neglect. Year after year, Noe had a child and a few months later, she arrived at the hospital with a dead infant.

Nurses noticed Noe never mourned her children. After the birth of one of her sons, a nurse overheard Noe threaten him while trying to feed him, "If you don't take this, I'll kill you. While giving birth to her last child, Arthur Joseph in , Noe had an emergency hysterectomy. None of her children lived to age 2.