Body Report | Serial killer central, from famous psychos to the most chilling sociopaths in film

Profile: Cedric Maake

Full Name – Maoupa Cedric Maake
Nickname – The Wemmer Pan Killer, Hammer Killer
Born – 1965
Location of Activity – Johannesburg, South Africa
Years of Activity – April 1996 - 1997
Number of Kills – 27 known
Date of Death – n/a
Cause of Death – n/a

Maoupa Cedric Maake was a particularly brutal individual whose crimes seemed almost random. He operated mostly in the city of Johannesburg, South Africa. His victims included men and women, both young and old. There was no set pattern to whom he decided to kill, just the chaotic murders of a deranged mind.

To add further unpredictability to his crimes, there were several methods that he used to attack his victims. Some he would sneak up behind while they were alone and bludgeon to death with rocks. Others consisted of couples in cars, the men which he would shoot before raping the women. For some reason he also attacked tailors within the inner city, beating them to death with a hammer while they were in their shops.

The seemingly unconnected nature of the crimes confused police for some time. They at first thought Maake’s killings to be the work of two separate serial killers due to the different victims chosen and murder weapons used. Eventually, however, they would catch up with Maake in December of 1997.

When he was finally caught, he was charged with a wide variety of crimes. The total convictions ended in 27 murders, 26 attempted murders, 14 rapes, 41 robberies and a number of other, less serious crimes. In all, he was found guilty of 114 charges and sentenced to 1159 years in prison, where he resides today.

Profile: Ahmad Suradji

Full Name – Ahmad Suradji
Nickname – N/A
Born – January 10, 1949
Location of Activity – Medan, Indonesia
Years of Activity – 1986 - 1997
Number of Kills – 42
Date of Death – July 10, 2008
Cause of Death – Firing Squad

Born in 1949, Ahmad Suradji was a cattle breeder in Indonesia who also happened to be the local village sorcerer, performing spells for people to ensure that things in life went their way. It was Suradji’s quest for sorcerous power that would lead him to perform much darker deeds, ending in the deaths of 42 women.

He would later tell police that the ghost of his father visited him in a dream and told him that if he would kill 70 women and drink their saliva that he would gain the powers of a mystic healer. He took this dream as fact and set out on his quest starting sometime in 1986.

His victims were all 11 to 30 years old and most of them were women who had come to him seeking his sorcerer’s skills to help them. He would bury them up to their waist in the ground and then strangle them with a cable. This ritualistic killing was part of what he believed necessary to gain the powers he was seeking.

When done with the women, he would bury their bodies on the land near his home. The heads of the women he would make sure faced his home, in order to give him more power. Suradji’s wives, of which he had three, also assisted him in these murders.

Suradji would eventually be arrested in May of 1997 when police stumbled upon some of the bodies he had buried. He would spend some time in jail before finally meeting his death at the hands of a firing squad on July 10, 2008.

Profile: Daniel Barbosa

Full Name – Daniel Camargo Barbosa
Nickname – none
Born – January 22, 1930
Location of Activity – Columbia, Ecuador
Years of Activity – 70s and 80s
Number of Kills – At least 72, as many as 150
Date of Death – November 13, 1994
Cause of Death – Murdered

Daniel Camargo Barbosa, like many of his type, suffered from a troubled childhood. His father was distant and his stepmother abusive, often forcing him to wear girls’ clothing as punishment for misbehaving. His first crimes were rapes, using his girlfriend at the time as an accomplice. They would lure young girls who were virgins back to their apartment where Barbosa would drug and rape them. This happened five times before they were finally caught in 1964. Barbosa was sentenced to three years, but this was later raised to eight.

When he got out, he returned to his same pattern, though in order to avoid future chances of being caught, he began to murder his victims when he was done with them. All of his victims were young girls, usually from the lower classes and in need of work. He would lure them away under the pretense of looking for someone and offer them a reward for taking him where he needed to go. Then he would strangle them, rape them and stab them to death with a knife. Their bodies he would leave in the woods for scavengers to feed upon. His victims came one after another, like an obsession that he needed to continuously feed.

Eventually, in May of 1974, Barbosa was caught in Columbia for the rape and murder of a nine-year-old girl. He was sentenced to 30 years, but managed to escape in 1984 and remain at large for nearly two years before being caught again. During the years that he was free, Barbosa claimed another 54 victims. When recaptured, he was sentenced to only 16 years, as that was the maximum allowable sentence in Ecuador. He never finished his prison time, however, as in 1994 another prisoner finished him for good.

Profile: Bela Kiss

Full Name – Bela Kiss
Nickname – n/a
Born – 1877
Location of Activity – Budapest, Hungary
Years of Activity – 1903 – 1914?
Number of Kills – 24+
Date of Death – unknown
Cause of Death – unknown

Bela Kiss is a serial killer of old whose reputation became so wide-spread that he began to become the subject of folk tales and children’s nightmares. Born in Hungary, he gave no indication that he was a killer to those who knew him. He worked as a tinsmith in a small village outside of Budapest and was well-liked by his neighbors. Though he had no formal education, he made a point of staying well read in subjects such as astrology, art, literature and history. Bela Kiss was considered to be the most eligible bachelor in the village and attracted the attention of many women. Eventually, however, this illusion would be shattered.

In 1914, Bela Kiss was conscripted into the army to fight in World War I. He left behind a collection of large, metal drums. To those who were curious, he had told them the drums were to store gasoline in case of rationing during the coming war. Once the war had started and Kiss was gone, soldiers in need of gasoline came to use this stockpile. Instead of the fuel that they expected to find, they stumbled upon the bodies of women – naked, strangled and pickled in alcohol. Within the drums and buried elsewhere on Kiss’s property police found 24 bodies.

All the victims were young women whom Bela would meet through advertisements that he had placed in Budapest newspapers. It was said he used the women as a source of money and if they became too problematic he would murder them. Upon searching his house, the police found evidence of 174 correspondences that Kiss had been keeping with various women in Budapest. These letters dated as far back as 1903 and led police to believe that there was most likely a much greater number of victims then they had found.

The police immediately sent word to the front line that Kiss was to be arrested. Upon receiving the news, however, those searching had a hard time trying to find him. Bela Kiss was a common name at the time and when they finally tracked down the one they were looking for, he had already fled. Kiss was never caught and no one knows for sure what happened to him, though many mysterious sightings were reported over the years, leading to several legends and fanciful stories.

Profile: Serhiy Tkach

Full Name – Serhiy Tkach
Nickname – Pologovsky Maniac
Born – September 12, 1952
Location of Activity – Ukraine and surrounding areas
Years of Activity – 1980 - 2005
Number of Kills – 29 confirmed (possible up to 130)

Serhiy Tkach is one of the most prolific serial killers of modern times, with a potential 130 plus victims. One of the reasons for this was that he worked as a police investigator in Siberia for many years, learning all the tricks of the trade. He would later use this knowledge of police procedure and technologies to fool his pursuers and remain free long enough to claim victim after victim. After his time with the police force, Tkach moved to the Ukraine, making his way by working in coal mines and industrial plants. This was when his killing spree most likely began.

Tkach’s victims were all girls between the ages of 8 and 18, whom he would suffocate to death and then rape the bodies post-mortem. When the killing spree started is up for debate. Tkach moved to the Ukraine in 1982, though some reports put his first killings in 1980. Other studies show that he did not begin killing until as late as 1984. Considering the large discrepancy between how many murders he was eventually convicted of and how many he claims to have committed, it is difficult to determine the exact start of his spree.

Regardless, Tkach claimed victims for somewhere around 25 years. Several others were arrested for his crimes during this time, due to his ability to leave no clues as to his identity. It wasn’t until witness saw him in the company of a friend’s daughter, who later turned up dead, would Tkach finally be caught.

He was eventually convicted of 29 counts of murder and 11 counts of attempted murder, despite his claims that those numbers were well above 100. Tkach demanded that the courts give him the death penalty, but it had been abolished following the collapse of the Soviet Union and so he was sentenced to life imprisonment instead.

When asked about his motives, Tkach gave a number of reasons. At first, he claimed that it was revenge on women for the mistreatment he received at the hands of his wives (of which he had three during his time). Later, he would state that his primary motivation was sexual pleasure and that he also did it to mock his former colleagues in the police department. Whatever his reasons, Tkach was a brutal and merciless individual.

Profile: Earle Nelson

Full Name – Earle Leonard Nelson
Nickname – The Gorilla Killer, The Dark Strangler
Born – May 12, 1897
Location of Activity – Western United States and Canada
Years of Activity – 1926 - 1927
Number of Kills – 22+
Date of Death – Jan 13, 1928
Cause of Death – Hanged

Earle Nelson’s life did not start with the happiest of childhoods. His parents died before he reached the age of two, leaving him to be raised by a fanatically religious grandmother. As a child, he was hit by a streetcar, remaining unconscious for nearly a week. Upon awakening, Nelson exhibited signs of brain damage, including erratic behavior and episodes of memory loss.

He went straight from his childhood into a life of crime, being arrested for the first time at 18 for breaking and entering. Later, Nelson would be committed to a mental institution, but managed to escape repeatedly – to the point where hospital staff simply gave up looking for him. In 1921, he attempted to molest a 12-year-old girl. He was caught and sent back to the institution, being released four years later. In was in 1926 that he began his killing spree, claiming his first two victims in two weeks.

Nelson’s targets consisted mostly of landladies. He would approach them under the guise of renting a room, gain their trust and then strangle them. This was often followed by Nelson having sex with his victim’s corpse. He would then clumsily dispose of the body, usually stashing it under a nearby bed where it would later be found.

The only reason Nelson wasn’t captured much earlier was due to the fact that he kept moving. He would change his name and relocate up and down the west coast, eventually ending up in Canada. Also, police at the time weren’t educated in how serial killers’ motivations worked, as they were still a relatively unstudied phenomenon at the time.

Nelson was arrested in Canada, though escaped from jail. When he was finally caught and recognized for the crimes he had committed, his attorney tried to get him off as mentally incompetent. The jury decided otherwise, however, and Nelson was hanged in Winnipeg on January 13, 1928.

Profile: Luis Garavito

Full Name – Luis Alfredo Garavito
Nickname – The Beast
Born – January 25, 1957
Location of Activity – Columbia
Years of Activity – 1990s
Number of Kills – 138 known

Often spoken of as the world’s worst serial killer, Luis Alfredo Garavito brought much suffering to the country of Columbia during his spree in the 1990s. He was born in Genova, Columbia, the eldest of seven brothers. As a child he was, according to his own accounts, physically, mentally and sexually abused by his father. He only attended school for a short number of years and when he grew old enough, he lived life as a drifter, plagued by alcoholism and many psychiatric problems.

Garavito’s victims consisted exclusively of children between the ages of 8 and 16. He would find poor children, often living on the streets or in the countryside, and approach them in the guise of a priest or monk. He would walk and talk with them, giving them gifts of money or food and when they became tired he would overpower them, rape them, cut their throats and, on most occasions, dismember their bodies.

Garavito’s murders occurred all across Columbia and some suspect in Ecuador as well. He was eventually captured on April 22, 1999 when picked up for suspicions of sexually assaulting a young boy. After being taken into custody, Garavito confessed to his murders. He was originally charged with 172 counts of murder, though only convicted on 138 of them.

He was given a sentence of 30 years in prison – the maximum allowed in Columbia – though this would be reduced to 22 years because of his cooperation in helping the authorities to locate the bodies of his victims. Though only 138 murders were linked to him, a map he drew in prison detailing the locations of his victims’ bodies puts the number at over 300, meaning that the level of Garavito’s crimes may be much more than people think.

Profile: Juan Corona

The Machete Murderer

Full Name – Juan Vallejo Corona
Nickname – The Machete Murderer
Born – 1934
Location of Activity – California, U.S.
Number of Kills – 25 known
Date of Death – Still living

Juan Vallejo Corona was born in Mexico, though when he was 16 he entered into the United States illegally in order to gain employment as a seasonal worker. He eventually settled in Marysville, north of California’s state capital of Sacramento, where he worked on a ranch. When a flood in December 1955 destroyed much of the area he lived in and claimed many lives, it would prove to be the event that sent Corona over the edge.

At this point, Corona became extremely schizophrenic, believing that the flood had killed everyone and that those who surrounded him now were nothing more than ghosts. He was institutionalized briefly because of this mental ailment and then deported back to Mexico. It didn’t take him long to return, though he entered the country legally this time around. He went back to work and climbed the ladder until he held the position of labor contractor. He would use this position in order to find victims.

The first recorded attack occurred February 25, 1970 when he hacked a man with a machete, though the man survived. No one knows for sure exactly what happened, but eventually more than 25 bodies would be discovered buried near Corona’s ranch. It was easy to track him down, as he had made the foolish mistake of burying the bodies with pieces of paperwork that had his name and other information on them.

Juan Corona was arrested on May 26, 1971. Instead of looking to get him off on the grounds of insanity, his attorney pursued a standard defense. The only thing that saved Juan’s life was the fact that while waiting for his trial, California abolished the death penalty. He was sent to prison where he still resides today.

Profile: Anatoly Onoprienko

"At the age of 30, he would begin his crime spree."

Full Name – Anatoly Yuriyovych Onoprienko
Nickname – The Beast of Ukraine, The Terminator, Citizen O
Born – July 25, 1959
Location of Activity – Ukraine
Years of Activity – 1989 - 1996
Number of Kills – 52
Date of Death – none
Cause of Death – none

Anatoly Onoprienko started his life fairly well-off. His father was a decorated soldier and his family fairly standard for the time, though his mother died when he was young. What proved to be a major factor in Anatoly’s eventual decent into serial killer infamy was the difficult relationship that he had with his father.

He was sent to live with his grandparents, though his older brother was allowed to remain with his father – something that Anatoly would become bitter over. This complication was made worse when his grandparents decided to send him to an orphanage and his father did nothing to rectify the situation. Later, Anatoly would state that this was the time when he began to hear voices in his head telling him to do horrible things to people.

Once free of the orphanage, Anatoly drifted from job to job, settling on nothing in particular. At the age of 30, he would begin his crime spree.

When choosing his victims, Anatoly would find a house in an isolated location. He would then cause a distraction and break into the house. First he would find and kill the adult men in the house, following up with the women and then the children. Each house he visited would become a bloodbath as he murdered entire families. Once finished with his deeds, he would light the houses on fire in order to cover his tracks. Anyone unfortunate enough to become a witness to Anatoly’s crimes would find themselves on his killing list as well.

Whenever one village became too risky to continue his killings, Anatoly would move on to a new location. His spree was swift and deadly, and he managed to claim 43 of his 52 victims in a short, 6-month span. Finally, in 1996, he was indentified and captured. Anatoly Onoprienko remains in custody still.

Profile: Vera Renczi

"In their deaths they had become the devoted and unwavering men that she had always wanted."

Full Name – Vera Renczi
Nickname – none
Born – 1903
Location of Activity – Romania
Years of Activity – 1920 - 1930
Number of Kills – 35 convicted, 38 possible
Date of Death – unknown
Cause of Death – Brain hemorrhage

Vera Renczi was born in Bucharest, Romania, the daughter of a wealthy family. Her life was one of relative ease and she lived out her younger years in a highly promiscuous lifestyle. She had already been involved with a number of men before she had reached the age of 15, most of them quite a bit older than her. Even at a young age, she had a personality that was described as jealous and possessive.

The troubles began following her first marriage. After coming to the conclusion that her husband was cheating on her, she poisoned him with arsenic, claiming that he had abandoned her. She married again within a few months and, for the same reasons as the first, poisoned the new husband as well.

After the second, Vera stopped marrying, though still continued to take men as lovers. She chose them from all walks of life, though each would sooner-or-later be suspected by Vera of being unfaithful, at which point she would poison them. Every time she killed another, she would tell those that asked that the man had been unfaithful or abandoned her.

Finally, the wife of one of Vera’s lovers followed her cheating husband to Vera’s house. When he didn’t return home, she confronted Vera, though was sent away promptly. She then brought the police to Vera’s house. Upon searching the premises, the police found 32 coffins in the cellar, each containing the decomposing corpse of one of her lovers.

When asked, Vera said that she liked to spend time in the cellar, surrounded by her former lovers. In their deaths they had become the devoted and unwavering men that she had always wanted.

She was eventually convicted of 35 counts of murder. One of these was her own son, who had apparently stumbled upon Vera’s secret. Vera Renczi later died of a brain hemorrhage while still serving time in prison.

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