Why they start killing and according to what principle they choose victims, they can not always answer even themselves. Most often the problem is mental illness, but there are absolutely healthy people among maniacs who just ... enjoy violence.
Below - 15 of the most cruel and merciless serial killers of our time.
1. Yang Xinhai
The "monster killer" became one of the most terrible maniacs in China. Xinhai climbed into the houses at night and killed his victims with axes, shovels, cleaver. In the end, he confessed to 67 murders and 23 rapes, and in 2004 Yana was executed.
2. Alexander Pichushkin
"The chess killer" Alexander was nicknamed for wanting to "finish the game" and kill 64 people. Pichushkin killed mostly homeless people. He smashed the victims' heads and inserted bottles of vodka into the wounds. He was arrested on suspicion of killing 49 people, but the maniac asked the court to write "on his account" 11 more victims.
3. Anatoly Onoprienko
"Terminator", "Butcher from Ukraine", "Citizen O". Onoprienko considered himself the best representative of the human race and sincerely believed that he had the right to exterminate less ideal representatives of his kind. How many people Anatoliy was depriving of life, it is not known, but he confessed to 52 murders.
4. Charles Edmund Cullen
The "Angel of Death" worked as a night nurse and killed at least 40 patients of his clinic with an unknown medicine, believing that they could not recover and leave the walls of the institution. For the deed committed by Charles, who in his childhood peers nearly brought to suicide, were sentenced to several lifelong terms.
5. Ahmad Suraji
The cattleman from Indonesia became famous as the "Black Magic Assassin". Ahmad killed 42 girls and buried their bodies in the field. Coraws Suraji buried so that their heads looked in the direction of his house. In July 2008, the killer was shot.
6. Patrick Wayne Kearney
"The killer from the garbage can" packed the victims' bodies in trash bags and threw them out on the tracks of California.
7. Luis Garavito
Colombian media called it "Animal". Luis Garavito raped and killed 140 boys, but according to some sources, the number of his victims exceeds three hundred. Maniac lured children - from 8 to 16 years, as a rule - with food and money, kept them in abandoned premises, raped, tortured, and then cut his throat.
8. Dennis Raider
He was an exemplary family man and regularly went to church, and at his leisure he killed people. He began his criminal activities in 1974 and killed 10 people. Until 2005, the police could not catch Raider, but justice was still triumphant.
9. Jack the Ripper
He terrorized London in 1888. The Ripper is credited with killing 5 women, whose body maniac mutilated and disfigured. Then Jack never managed to catch him and until now his personality remains a mystery.
10. Ramadan Abdel Rahim Mansour
The majority of his victims are homeless young people. He killed children in Cairo trains and threw the bodies on the run. Some guys were still alive at that moment.
11. Eileen Warnos
This maniac has a tragic history of life, which, of course, does not justify the murders committed by her. As a child, she was raped by her grandfather. In her youth, Eileen began to make a living by prostitution. In 1989 - 1990, she killed 7 men who were her clients, and in 2002, Warnos was executed.
12. Tsutomu Miyazaki
He was nicknamed the "Human Dracula" because Tsutomu sometimes drank the blood of his victims, which Miyazaki killed and then raped. On his conscience, not only adult girls. Once he burned a 4-year-old child, and threw his bones on the threshold of the house of the unfortunate's parents. They executed Tsutomu in 2008.
13. Cedric Makey
Maikeka was convicted of killing 27 people, 41 cases of armed robbery and several more minor crimes. Since the death penalty was abolished in South Africa, Cédric was sentenced to 1,340 years in prison.
14. William Bonin
"Murderer from the freeway" admitted confusion about 21 boys. Before the announcement of the verdict, William sent letters to the parents of his victims, in which he described in detail the last moments of the life of the unfortunate. The root of Bonin's problems was, most likely, in a despotic father who constantly mocked him.
15. Paul John Knowles
"Killer Casanova" guilty of the death of at least 18 people, although the maniac himself believed that his conscience at least 35 victims. For the first time Knowles was imprisoned at the age of 19. To kill "in an adult" Paul began July 26, 1974. The very same criminal was killed on November 21, 1974, when he attempted to flee.