truTV: Not Reality. Actuality.

A study in sexual sadism, he & his friend stalked and abducted attractive women to torture, rape & murder.

Model sailor traveled on warship to murder prostitutes all over the world. Now updated to include his trial and sentencing.

DNA evidence exculpates him from one rape/attempted murder, but nails him on the rape and murder of Teresa Halbach, a young photographer who visited him for business reasons. Even worse, he involves his teenage nephew in the horrible crime.

This legendary countess is remembered for murdering women for fun and bathing in their blood to make herself more beautiful. Was there any truth to this heinous legend or was this a story concocted by her powerful political enemies?

Beautiful young women suddenly vanish and it's clear that a sadistic killer is on the loose in Florida.

That's what they called the tall, very handsome well-dressed young man, who kept reciting passages from the scriptures. He was the last person seen with a three young murder victims, none of them sexually assaulted, but oddly all three were menstruating at the time of their death. DNA has brought forward new leads in this strange unsolved case.

Profiler and star of I, Detective, explodes 10 myths about serial killers.

An imprisoned psychopath attempts to confess to dozens of murders, provoking debate as to his motives and veracity.

Sharon Wood, 24, left her secretarial job in Portland and entered the basement level of a parking garage to look for her car when a tall, pudgy man approached her. She later told police that she had sensed someone behind her and had tried to return to an area where she could hear other people. But then someone tapped her shoulder and she turned around. The man was holding a pistol.

In a split second, she decided to fight. She had barely a chance against him, but she believed that if she didn't struggle while someone might still hear her, she'd die that day. Instinct told her that this man had murder on his mind.

Sharon kicked at him with her high-heeled shoes, screamed again and bit him hard. Yet he managed to slam her head on the concrete, dazing her. Fortunately another car came along, and her attacker ran off. She survived, but not long afterward another young woman did not.

Brudos is one of the most shocking serial killers ever and the subject of Ann Rule's book The Lust Killer. He abducted, tortured & mutilated young women in his garage, right under the noses of his wife and children. An analysis of the psychological factors that created this monster.

Serial killer Jerry Brudos, died March 28, 2006.

For three decades, the terrifying serial killer who called himself BTK ("Bind, Torture, Kill") was uncaught. First he would cut the phone lines, and then he would get into the house somehow, waiting for his victim to come home. The killings drove Wichita's women into a frenzy, but then the murders unexplicably stopped. Police theorized that BTK could have died or have been incarcerated for some other crime or mental disease, or maybe even moved away.

Then in March, 2004, BTK sent a very convincing letter to the local newspaper, taking responsibility for the September, 1986, unsolved death of Vicki Wegerle. Included with the letter were a photocopy of Wegerle's driver's license and three photos of her body that BTK took after he killed her.

In May, BTK sent a copy of the chapter titles of David Lohr's Crime Library story on the case to a local TV station. Lohr's feature story was the only BTK case history on the Net at that time. However, BTK had changed several of the chapter titles, including one that he changed to "Will There Be More?"

And so, it began again, with BTK impatiently pointing out to police the murders of his that they missed. Finally, BTK made the mistake that culminated in his capture.

Here is the most detailed story of this case as it unfolded in 1974 and then again in 2004.

The most frightening of serial killers: a handsome, educated psychopathic law student who stalked and murdered dozens of young college women who looked very much like a young woman who broke off her relationship with him.

Bundy was a very adept and glib con artist who faked a broken arm in a sling to convince young women to help him carry his textbooks to his car. Once there, he battered them with a baseball bat and carried them off for ghoulish rituals.

Well-known author explains why serial killers have to kill, using his extensive knowledge of Ted Bundy.

An excerpt from Michaud's book that delves into the twisted psyche of one of the most terrifying serial killers.

Interview with the serial killer expert, Dr. Keppel, who took Ted Bundy's confession.

Dr. Robert Keppel, expert on the Ted Bundy and Green River cases, explains the lessons learned for future police investigations.

It takes more than a few homicides to get the attention of the people in a city the size of Los Angeles. Murders are a daily occurrence. So when three women living hi-risk lifestyles were found strangled and naked on hillsides very few people lost sleep over it. Only a couple sharp homicide detectives became nervous that this was just the beginning. Everything changed when five "nice girls" were abducted from their middle-class neighborhoods.

Two psychopathic cousins made torture into an unspeakable art form as they experimented on their young victims, giving new meaning to the concept of "Evil."

Highly intelligent, but mentally unstable British mechanical engineer, lures young women to a gruesome death.

Author Paul Kidd discusses the roots of seminal serial killer movies and how Hollywood has developed the genre. He reviews his top 15 favorites.

Quiet Los Angeles widow is found dead in a pool of blood in blood. It appears that she was tortured in a calculated, cold-blooded sexual assault and murder. LAPD investigators hunker down on this case, promising her family that they will catch her killer, and finally, as the forensic tools evolve, they are able to bring a teen serial killer to justice.

Profiling, linkage and signature analysis play a major part in the case of African- American Cleophus Prince Jr., charged with murdering six attractive white women in the San Diego area.

A terrible mother turns a boy with genius IQ into a woman-hating serial killer.

Convicted of one murder in the late 1960s Michigan college campus serial murder case, police believed that he was responsible for all of them. Collins was implicated superficially in fifteen murders, but only the first seven on the list were officially considered his

At the time, he was a 22-year-old student at Eastern Michigan University, majoring in education when he was arrested for the murder of Karen Sue Beineman. He was from Center Line, a suburb north of Detroit, where he had lived with his mother and stepfather. At six feet, he was wiry and muscular, with neatly trimmed dark brown hair and sideburns. Many people thought him handsome and easy to talk to.

Attractive or not, he had a dark side that was beginning to emerge. He had belonged to a fraternity, but had been kicked out under suspicion of theft. He had also engaged in petty burglaries for fun and kept his four motorcycles running with stolen parts. One of his professors suspected him of cheating.

In addition to being sexually very aggressive with dates, Collins also had expressed some ideologies that bordered on psychopathy. He had told a girl that if a man had to kill, he killed. If he decided it was right for him to do it, then he had to do it. The perfect crime, he told her, was when there was no guilt. Without guilt, a person could not get caught.

New DNA evidence and the conviction of Gary Earl Leiterman suggest that there were several perpetrators.

On the morning of May 24, 2004, Brooke Wilberger, a beautiful blonde, blue-eyed coed who had just completed her freshman year at Brigham Young University, was washing lampposts in the Corvallis, Oregon apartment complex managed by her sister and brother-in-law. One moment she was there, the next moment, she was gone. She left behind her flip flops, a pail of sudsy water, and no witnesses to her disappearance.

Only one man saw something. His name was Brian, and he called the police, saying he'd seen a green minivan driving erratically. Before he could explain further, the call was disconnected, and he never called back.

On November 30, 2004, a foreign exchange student in New Mexico was grabbed at knifepoint and ordered into the back of a red two-door Honda with tinted windows. The assailant drove her to a deserted parking lot, and threatened to kill her unless she undressed and performed oral sex on him. He tied her ankles together with a shoelace, tied her wrists with a scarf, stuffed her panties into her mouth and pinned them there by tying another shoelace around her head.

Clues in both cases led to a violent man with a long rap sheet who had no business being free.

Over a 7-week period in the summer of 1993, three young women were stabbed and slashed to death in and around Frankston in southeastern Victoria. There was nothing to connect them other than they all lived in the Frankston district.

When he was finally caught, the Frankston serial killer was an oafish lay-about who called himself John Candy, after the late funnyman. But Denyer was no funnyman. He dissected his sister's teddy bears at age 10 and then slit the throat of the family's pet kitten and hung its corpse from a tree branch in the back yard. Several months before he embarked on his summer murder spree, Denyer had disemboweled a friend's cat and cut the throats of its kittens.

Handsome medical student and Sunday school superintendent outrages the people of San Francisco in the 1890s with the murder of his girlfriends.

Profiling experts John Douglas and Roy Hazelwood and true-crime author Stephen Michaud examine the personalities of sexual sadists and serial rapists, along with the career of this particularly brutal criminal.

An ordinary, inconspicuous man, from a good family, that no one would dream could be capable of raping and stabbing his victims so brutally. He was in and out of prison, treated frequently for his violent compulsions, but always let out again to continue his depraved "career" that is, until he started to kill his victims.

Young Marine suffered head injury that completely changed his behavior and pushed him into murder. Now, he has a new friend, busty GroBust spokeswoman Victoria Redstall who threatens to make him a "star" in a her documentary.

Troubled young man lured eight working women to his family's home, murdered them and disposed of them in the walls. Eventually, the family realized that they had a home full of decomposing corpses.

The Frankford area of Philadelphia was once a town older than the City of Brotherly Love itself. At one time, it was a prosperous area, but by 1980 it had become a crime-ridden slum populated by prostitutes, junkies, and small businesses struggling to survive. This was the area that Sylvester Stallone selected as the setting for his film Rocky.

It was here in 1985 where the first victim was found in a railroad yard.

Helen Patent was nude from the waist down and she had been posed in a sexually provocative position, with her legs open and her blouse pulled up to expose her breasts. She was 52 when she died, and while it was clear to the police that she had been stabbed many times, it took an autopsy to determine the official cause and manner of death. She had been sexually assaulted and had died from 47 stab wounds to her head and chest. She had also been stabbed in the right arm, and one vicious and deep slash across her abdomen had exposed the internal organs.

Between seven and eight women from 28-68 became the victims of this violent rapist and serial killer in an old section of Philadelphia. Leonard Christopher, a quiet black man who worked in the area, was arrested and convicted for the murder of one victim in the series. But the quality of the evidence used to convict Christopher is controversial, especially since another likely killing in the series occurred while he was in jail.

Lifetime psychopathic misfit is permitted to rape and assault women, rewarded with short prison times and then released to wreak havoc on the female population. Finally after a number of murders, he is locked up for good. He should be the poster boy for much tougher sentencing laws in Australia.

Suspected of murders of young women and children in France, Belgium and other European countries, he says he killed about 2 a year for a decade or more. An unbelievably botched French investigation and cover-up of potentially hi-level clients of a pedophile ring. A key investigator who would have exposed this scandal was killed just before the court presentation and his death made to look like a suicide. This case when it comes to trial will echo the Belgian government scandal with the Marc Dutroux case.

Screwed-up loser and sexual predator stalks young women and girls in New York state, until his crimes catch up with him.

New information and doubts are being raised in the 1970s Columbus, Georgia serial killer case in which Carlton Gary, then a young handsome black man, was convicted of the murders of elderly white women.

A shocking case of criminal behavior and government incompetence leaves a number of women dead.

For sixteen years, he raped, robbed and murdered. Suddenly he quit, became a model employee and figured he'd never have to pay for the murder of at least 13 women. But then the Feds gave Kansas City a grant to solve cold cases. Even though he killed almost 3 times as many people as Jack the Ripper, few have ever heard his name.

It started out as a simple trip from her home in Oregon to see her friend in California, but she never got there. As she hitchhiked, she was picked up by Cameron & Janice Hooker. Instead she spent the next seven years chained, blindfolded and living in a ventilated box, wearing a slave collar.

Eventually she was allowed to do household chores such as cooking, washing dishes, and cleaning up for the couple and their two children. Yet whenever Cameron yelled "Attention!" she was to strip off her clothes, stand on her tiptoes, and reach her hands to the top of the doorway between the living room and dining room.

Then one day the whole nightmare ended as quickly as it had begun.

He would spot a pretty woman on Denver's streets and follow her home. After he was assured of her address, he would climb through a window or up a set of back stairs into her abode. Once inside, he forced her to her bedroom where he secured her hands with a length of cord he carried in his jacket everywhere he went. He also muzzled her mouth with a gag cloth. The gun brought the advantage, the cloth silenced her yelps, but the rope, he discovered, was the key to a new sensation. It pinned back the woman's flailing arms, allowing him the liberty to run his fingers across a soft, curving body without interruption. To explore new mysteries and reach new peaks. The lady was at his mercy as he had been at the mercy of all those girls who had called him laughable names on the playground.

Tying victims to a bed or a chair, he unbuttoned their blouses, loosened their skirts, and fondled their flesh and, simultaneously, his own. Sometimes he made them lie down beside him and pretended that they enjoyed it as much as he did. He would not fully undress them, nor rape them for the libido was fully satisfied just to crack the moral bell jar. But, best of all for the inadequate Harvey Glatman, the more he touched them the more comfortable he became in their presence. After each molestation, he felt himself more like the man he wanted to be and not like the loser in those newspaper ads promoting vitamins, the guy who gets sand kicked in his face by some muscleman.

His horrifying photos were more than souvenirs because, in Glatman's mind, they actually carried the power of his need for bondage and control. They showed the women in various poses: sitting up or lying down, hands always bound behind their backs, innocent looks on their faces, but with eyes wide with terror because they had guessed what was to come."

Philadelphia serial killer murders his girlfriends and leaves their corpses around in his home. Some believe that he is slow-witted, drug addicted or insane, others see him entertaining, religious and a talented artist with some eccentricities.

Scores of women murdered in the Seattle area results in the longest running homicide investigation in U.S. history. Finally DNA evidence points the finger at Gary Leon Ridgway as the killer. His unsuspecting wife tells of their remarkable relationship.

Lipstick Killer or legal scapegoat?

Alaskan serial killer lured women to his cabin, brutalized them and then released them in the wilderness. Then he hunted them down like wild animals.

Jack the Ripper was the most famous serial killer of all time. Brutally murdering prostitutes in London's notorious Whitechapel district, he caused a panic in 1888.

Why does this long-ago killer who murdered a few prostitutes merit the attention he gets? Because Jack the Ripper represents the classic whodunit. Not only is the case an enduring unsolved mystery that professional and amateur sleuths have tried to solve for over a hundred years, but the story has a terrifying, almost supernatural quality to it. He comes from out of the fog, kills violently and quickly and disappears without a trace. Then for no apparent reason, he satisfies his blood lust with ever-increasing ferocity, culminating in the near destruction of his final victim, and then vanishes from the scene forever. The perfect ingredients for the perennial thriller.

A criminal profile by former FBI profiler Gregg McCrary and a penetrating analysis of the many suspects shed light on this legendary killer.

The Happy Face Killer

Five young black women, two of which were pregnant, are murdered by a serial killer on a seven-week murder spree in Florida. The suspect, Paul Durousseaux, is also tied to a murder in Georgia.

On Halloween night in 2002, Tina Mayberry stepped out of Gipson's restaurant in Douglasville, Georgia, where she'd been attending a Halloween party. Moments later, she staggered back into the bar, bleeding from stab wounds and seeking help. Despite frantic efforts of party goers and the paramedics, she died a short time later at an Atlanta hospital. She had neither been robbed nor sexually molested; there was no apparent motive, no clues, no suspect.

Vicki Freeman described her boyfriend Jeremy as "....caring, considerate, loving. Gentle." Freeman, fourteen years Jones' senior, met him in 2003 in the same bar where Tina Mayberry was stabbed. Jones approached her and told her she was beautiful. It was apparently love at first sight.

But love with Jeremy Jones had a dark side, and Freeman admitted that he had been physically abusive, but that they always made up. She thinks that the police are piling all their old crimes on her lover, trying to clear their books of unsolved murders.

This glib, good-looking psychopath raped & killed over a dozen women for fun, bragging he can "talk the panties off a nun." Mistaken FBI fingerprint system allowed him to hide under another criminal's identity for years, resulting in the unnecessary death of several women.

Since 1993, upward of 340 young women have been brutally murdered in the Mexican border town. More than a dozen suspects have been jailed, but the killing continues.

At age 15, this genius-level serial killer killed his grandparents. Then he killed pretty hitchhikers and ended up decapitating his mother.

Prostitutes and young women traveling deserted stretches of interstate I-5 of the Sacramento area in the 1970s and 1980s were stalked by a psychopath whose fetishes for women's clothing left a damning thread of evidence.

Kiss was a rather handsome man with blond hair and remarkable, vibrant blue eyes. Not only had Kiss taught himself his trade as a tinsmith, but he was a voracious reader and was highly conversant on art, literature and history. He struck his fellow villagers as an amiable and hard-working fellow with a penchant for throwing parties at a local hotel. Known as a generous person, everybody liked him and he was considered by the women of the town to be its most eligible bachelor.

His town had a limited choice of female companions, so Kiss kept an apartment in Budapest and took out advertisements in newspapers there.

Over the years a steady stream of lovelies from Budapest spent short periods of time at Kiss's home in Cinkota, but no one in the town was introduced to these young women who came and went so quickly.

Many of the facts about Bela Kiss will never be known, except that he murdered 24 of the women who came to see him, and that he has to a large extent passed into myth and had grown into a figure larger than life.

Soon after killing Mr. Carr, the John Paul Knowles put on one of Carr's suits and wandered into a Holiday Inn bar in Atlanta, Georgia. At the same time, British journalist Sandy Fawkes came into the bar looking for a drink. She had just come in from a failed assignment in Washington, D.C., feeling tired and discouraged, and she noticed him. Thinking he was handsome, she described him like this: "His gaunt good looks made him stand out from the crowd." She observed his nice suit and tie and thought he might be European. However, when he came over to ask her to dance, she declined and said she had to work. She then left to go to the local newspaper offices, but upon her return, the stranger was still there. "Decidedly, he really was very handsome," she wrote, "tall, well over six foot, broad-shouldered, narrow-hipped and as slender as a wraith." She noted his carved cheekbones, beaked nose, and "well-formed mouth." They struck up a conversation, went to dinner, and despite her resolve, they ended up in bed.

This handsome psychopath, known as the Casanova Killer, went on a spree that left 18-20 people dead.

Likable, but not very intelligent, he was called "Uncle" by the neighborhood children, until he killed and ate one. Later he unfolded a shocking series of murders that sickened the people of Germany.

Beautiful women are abducted from their homes in the Baton Rouge area and panic ensues as the residents realize there is a serial killer in their midst. Small-town investigators with sharp instincts identify Baton Rouge serial killer while big agencies are derailed with flawed FBI profile guiding their activities. DNA finally turns them in the right direction.

Beautiful white women are abducted from their homes in the Baton Rouge, La. area and panic ensues as the Baton Rouge residents realize there is a serial killer in their midst. Big city cops with a flawed FBI profile in hand, look for a white killer, but DNA finally turns them in the right direction.

Here is a story that tells you why DNA evidence is the greatest advance in crime and punishment since the invention of the jury. Three East Harlem teenage girls' murder-rapes defy experienced NYPD detectives. The killer moves their bodies from the crime scenes to dump sites in a shopping-cart. After many years, a comparison of DNA taken from serial rapist Arohn Kee is matched against semen found in all three victims. DNA technology also matches Kee's semen in another rape where an innocent man was charged.

Shockingly brutal sexual predator terrorizes the Tampa, Florida area, but concerted local and federal investigation brings the crime spree to an end.

The notorious serial killer who preyed upon young tourists that came to visit Australia's beautiful Belangalo State Forest. The "Backpacker Murders" was one of the country's largest homicide investigations, which finally produced the painstaking evidence needed to put this monster away for life.

For decades, this bizarre predator stalked men and women in love, murdered them and sexually mutilated the women. A number of men were suspected of being the "Monster" and there were several trials associated with this unsolved case. This most unusual story inspired author Thomas Harris to locate one of his Hannibal Lecter books in Florence.

Known as the Night Stalker, he worships Satan and longs to sit next to him in Hell. His series of horrifying crimes in the suburbs of Los Angeles and San Francisco were meant to show Satan that he is just as evil as Jack the Ripper.

Incredibly, this fiend was the darling of many groupies who found his rebelliousness irresistible. Now on death row in California, he has married one of them.

In recent times, British authorities have prevented his 4,000-page memoir from being published, but on November 4, 2006, he sent a three-page letter from Full Sutton Prison to an editor of The Evening Standard. While in carefully printed prose he discussed the recent development, out of "consideration for the victim's family" he declined to provide the most graphic details. In it, Nilsen described his encounter with the fourteen-year-old boy whose death, he once had stated, had "changed my life as I knew it." His name was Stephen Dean Holmes and, despite his youth, Nilsen apparently met him in the Cricklewood Arms pub. That was in 1978, twenty-eight years ago. While Nilsen wrote that Stephen was the first of twelve victims, the police estimate that he actually killed at least 15. He has said he'll assist in the identification of all of his victims, but seven remain unidentified. Stephen was once in this group, because at the time of Nilsen's arrest, he had not known who the boy was. He'd been on a drunken binge during their encounter and later could not find identification papers on the body. Thus, Nilsen was not charged with this murder when tried for six others. Nilsen is England's version of the American Jeffrey Dahmer.

Popular crime author Gary C. King tells the story from his book Blind Rage about this serial killer who carried out terrible and unthinkable acts of cruelty against the young women who were his victims.

The Vancouver-area pig farmer was found guilty of second-degree murder in an estimated, highly controversial, $100 million investigation and longest trial in Canadian history. Pickton preyed upon sex trade workers and is believed to have been responsible for the deaths of some 60 women. Many were stunned and disappointed that he was not found guilty of murder in the first degree.

Hey, come on, babe, follow me.
I'm the Pied Piper follow me.
I'm the Pied Piper
And I'll show you were it's at

Charles Howard Schmid Jr., or "Smitty," was called "The Pied Piper of Tucson," for his ability to get girls to fall for him. He stood five feet, four inches tall, but added three more inches by padding his stack-heeled cowboy boots with rags and tin cans. He also dyed his reddish-brown hair black, used pancake make-up, whitened his lips, and applied a fake mole to his left cheek a "beauty" mark. Arrogant and narcissistic, he came from a wealthy family, so he used the niceties he could buy to impress young high school girls. He adopted the droopy-eyed look associated with Elvis, his idol, and acquired a rock musician's mystique.

Smitty was a fixture around the high school, luring girls into his cars. They hung out on Speedway, a main drag, and they were easy prey for a predatoreven one who stumbled around in his ridiculous boots. He became something of a folk hero to kids who didn't quite fit in, because he was older and he knew things. He was strange, but he livened things up in a desert town full of retired people where nothing much was happening. Smitty made things interesting.

Many girls went out with him and three never returned. There are a lot of places to bury a body in the desert.

15-year-old black serial killer would have gone free under R.I. law, but visit from President Clinton helps galvanize lawmakers & cops.

Look for behavioral clues in this high-profile whodunit with two separate investigative threads.

A woman's escape from a sadomasochistic dungeon uncovers the activities of one of the most extreme sexual sadists.

Also known as Red Ripper, he stalked teenage girls, raped, strangled and mutilated them until some excellent detective work crushed the Spider for good.

Famed psychic Peter Hurkos sheds light on the brutal serial rapes and murders by this handsome jazz musician.

Scores of women murdered in the Seattle area results in the longest running homicide investigation in U.S. history. Finally DNA evidence points the finger at Gary Ridgway as the killer.

People thought this mild-mannered, socially-backward guy was harmless, but 17 women died by his hand before he was caught red-handed with a decomposing body in his truck.

Expert police work and forensics leads to the conviction of a seemingly harmless county employee for the torture murders of 19 drug-addicted prostitutes. Imprisoned years earlier for murdering his baby daughter, he was let out of prison after 10 years on a 70-year sentence.

Intelligent teen athlete with chronic juvenile rap sheet turns into a rampaging rapist, stalker and serial killer. Despite his good points, his chronic violence puts him on Pennsylvania's death row.

This first Internet serial killer is one of the boldest criminals in recent history, using bondage and S&M to lure unsuspecting women to their deaths. His story is one of the most bizarre and lengthy homicidal careers in American criminal history.

His brutal treatment of his sometimes willing victims stands in stark contrast to his benign, fleshy appearance. Robinson compounded his murderous ways by taking the infant of one victim and selling it to his brother, pretending to be a do-good adoption broker. He seduced vulnerable or lonely women he met through Internet chat rooms and killed them, continuing to cash their government checks or alimony payments for years with just minimal interference from their desperate families and frustrated investigators.

Prominent true crime author Gary King's feature story on one of the Northwest's worst serial nightmares. A Crime Library exclusive.

Called the "Cross Country Killer," this good-looking, smooth-talking extrovert "always got what he wanted" and took extraordinary risks as he traveled all across the country to murder and rob the redheaded women that especially appealed to him.

On August 20 1990, the beautiful university town of Gainesville, Florida was ranked as being the thirteenth best place to live in the United States by Money magazine. By the end of the following week it looked as though Jack the Ripper had been reincarnated in sunny Florida. First, a bloodied naked body of a young woman was found lying grotesquely on a bed with her arms above her head. Then, another young woman was found nearby. Both had been stabbed repeatedly, mutilated and deliberately positioned for maximum shock effect.

It got much worse. They saw what appeared to be a naked body seated on the edge of the bed, bent over at the waist with a small pool of blood at the feet. Then came the shocking realization that it was the headless corpse of the once beautiful Christa. On the bed next to her were her two nipples. Shades of the Jack the Ripper's treatment of Mary Kelly.

The monster who tortured and mutilated five young women was Danny Rolling, a young man who was himself the victim of almost constant physical and mental abuse in his childhood.

Sixteen-year-old Paula Perrera was a bubbly, confident, carefree girl who performed well in school, enjoyed the company of her tight-knit group of friends as much as a good book and was active in the church youth group.

On many occasions she chose to bypass the school bus altogether and instead hitchhiked to classes. Paula's boyfriend begged her not to hitchhike because of the inherent dangers, she ignored his pleas claiming that, "only nice people pick me up."

Michael Ross was later quoted saying to police during an interview "as soon as I saw her (Paula), she was dead." Paula was not Michael's first victim, nor would she be his last. In fact, before his capture he would claim responsibility for the murders of 8 young women.

While at school, Michael was socially active and joined several organizations. Moreover, he became involved in several relationships with some beautiful young co-eds, one to which he became engaged. However, the relationships always ended in failure and Michael's "dream of the perfect family began to be crowded by other fantasies disturbing, violent, sexual fantasies."

It didn't take long for his fantasies to spiral out of control.

The friendly, trust-inspiring singles bar psychopath

Out-of-control psychopath, using his job as deputy sheriff to deceive, excels in double murders of girls and young women, killing as many as 36. Cheated from the pleasure of murdering women, in prison he runs a porno ring, a jailhouse lawyer scam, and a mail fraud operation.

A brutal series of murders of young middle class women outside Johannesburg, South Africa. Selepe, the key suspect,is killed by police when he tries to escape. Was he the sole killer, an accomplice of serial killer Moses Sithole, or an innocent man?

He just loved to kill. It was almost a mission.

Calling himself "Coast to Coast," to describe his geographic reach, he admitted the murder of Katy Harris and the throat-slashing of her friend. He said he killed an entire family in Illinois, a mother and daughter in Missouri, a teenage girl in Lexington, Ky., a drifter in Arizona, a child in San Antonio. And there were many morea string of perhaps 20 murders across America that spanned three decades, by Sells' account.

Charming & polite head of Youth Against Human Abuse raped 40 women, murdered another 37 and 1 child. He is South Africa's Ted Bundy.

Forensic bite marks is the only evidence in this remarkable case.

An upstate New York serial killer and his antisocial identical twin fuel debate over the heritable components of violent crime.

At age 19, this Wisconsin psychopath broke into a home, tied a young baby sitter to a bed and raped her at knife point. He then shot the homeowner in the face. Sentenced to 70 years, he only served a few years. He then raped another teenager and was sentenced to only 12 years, but was again released to hone his skill as a serial killer.

Judy Dykton decided to get some early morning studying done for a neurology exam. She heard a sound like an animal crying outside. Ignoring it, she decided to do some laundry before hitting the books. Once more she heard something. This time she thought it sounded like a child crying out. She pulled open the blinds and saw a woman across the street at 2319, perched on a ledge. Judy pushed open the window and heard Cora's tearful cry. "Oh, my God, they are all dead!"

Reporter Joe Cummings went up to the second floor, looked down the hall and turned right. It was still dark, the sun had begun to rise. He walked down the hall. To his right, he saw bodies of the nurses inside the bedroom, their skin a sickly ochre. A little further down the hall, he saw another bedroom with three more bodies and said. "Oh my God." That made seven upstairs and one downstairs. Eight in total.

The stark realization that the deaths of seven women since late summer 1997, four of whom were killed during the year's final weeks, were the work of a serial killer, renewed fears among the public and law enforcement officials alike that the infamous and elusive Seattle-area Green River Killer had found a new killing ground in and around Spokane, Washington.

It was only talk and speculation, quelled by the fact that the killer's method of operation was markedly different from that of the Green River Killer. Disturbingly, the number of bodies would more than double before they stopped, and many others would be attributed to the same killer.

Surprisingly when the killer was found, he turned out to be the father of four daughters and a son, who led a relatively ordinary and unremarkable life that was characterized by exemplary military service.

Persistent and creative police work in Florida yields the killer of more than 40 women in several states.

The Yosemite Park Murders by good looking "boy next door." Now with regular updates of current events.

Carol found Doug to be suddenly quite controlling. He demanded that she do what he wanted and threatened to abandon her if she did not comply. He wanted a sex slave, someone who would see to all of his needs, mundane and bizarre. She gave in, expecting that in return he would be true to her. But he soon told her that he was tired of having sex with her and needed something new and more exciting. He brought prostitutes home, and to please him Carol went along with it.

It was a long hot summer for LAPD. Bodies of young women were found mutilated, even headless, and dumped along the embankments around the freeway ramps.

Soon a call came into the station from a woman who implicated her boyfriend in the killings but who refused to offer details that could help to locate him. She could have been just a crank caller, but she was correct about how the murders had been done. She knew details that had not been released to the media. But the switchboard cut her off and she did not call back. If she had, some lives could have been saved and she might not have taken the path she did.

It was no crank call.

He did not fit the profile of a serial killer. He had a master's degree, knew several languages, was a former science teacher, was charming, was in a seemingly satisfying relationship, and seemed completely at ease with having his home searched and his gun tested. He did not abuse substances. Associates who were questioned about him remained loyal, certain the police had the wrong man. He had coached football, helped with Cub Scouts, and was kind to children. He was both articulate and artistic, a cultivated man accomplished in many things from piano to bullfighting, who seemed anything but a murderer. He was generous, friendly, and helpful to people in need.

Edda Kane went out on August 19 in 1979 to hike the trails in a park at the foot of Mount Tamalpais, also known as "the Sleeping Lady," which overlooked San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge. But she did not return home that day. Found the next day, Edda was dead. She'd been attacked from behind and had a bullet wound on the back of her skull...

Young man becomes obsessed with torture and murder, idolizes Charles Manson and seeks to become a "murder machine." Dr. Ramsland presents the interesting case forensics and emotional pathology.

No doubt his need to dominate women and turn them into his sex slaves began well before his arrest at age 17 for participating in a gang rape in Sydney, Australia. Therapists noted that he wanted to hold a woman captive against her will. This charming son of an American naval officer, despite his stable childhood, became compulsive about killing beautiful young women mostly beauty queens who could be models. It was an addiction, spurred by sexual fantasies and excited by a certain type of attractive victim. Eight beauties definitely died by his hand, but he is almost certainly responsible for many other deaths as well.

South African serial killer is unusual in choosing both female prostitutes and adolescent boys as victims.

An art student turns into a sadistic Jeffrey-Dahmer-like murderer of young men, known as the Butcher of Kansas City. This interactive forensics story goes into the psychology of a psychopath.

Australia's Mark Mala Valera was a budding serial killer until he turned himself in to authorities after butchering an elderly man and a former Lord Mayor of Wollongong. His next victim was to be his father, but his lovely sister and her wonderful boyfriend, butchered him themselves as a favor to Mark. This is an interesting study of a very violent and dangerous pair of siblings.

Serial killer who preyed upon homosexual men around the Gulf Coast of Florida, called the Hog Trail Murders.

In Sutter County, California, near the Feather River five miles north of Yuba City, a Japanese farmer named Goro Kagehiro was touring his peach orchard on May 19, 1971 when he spotted a freshly-dug hole between two trees that appeared to be the size of a man. He could not understand why someone had dug there. It turned out to be the grave of migrant workers who had been the victims of a killing spree. At least 25 men were eventually found buried in that area.

Corona provided labor to the farmers and was eventually convicted of the crimes, but evidence has surfaced that suggests a rush to judgment.

A young man from a good family deviated into necrophilia and cannibalism, then lured boys to his apartment to be murdered and maimed.

Bizarre Ohio serial killer who murdered several men to satisfy his cravings for power.

Lonely Hearts lady loved her men to death.

Gary Ray Bowles, violent bisexual, cruised the Florida gay bars in the mid-1990's looking for men of means to live off, rob and murder.

One of the most notorious serial killers, "respectable" Chicago-area businessman hires young men to work in his contracting company, then rapes and murders scores of them, burying their bodies on his properties. In prison, he became the focus of researching the psychopathic mind.

Arsenic Anna: Sweet young woman lures older benefactors to their deaths

When his lover, David Hill, became angry and left for a few days, Kearney, a California aircraft engineer with a good position, would boil over with rage and go cruising for someone to take out his frustrations on. Over a period of time, he killed at least 21 men, mutilated and dismembered them, and finally disposed of them in trash bags.

Richard W. Rogers finally convicted of the murder of two of his numerous gay male victims. VMD, vacuum metal deposition, technology which saves fingerprints from plastic bags, was a key factor in his trial. Rogers disposed of his victims in plastic trash bags which he dumped along the roadways in New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

England's Jeffrey Dahmer kept his mutilated lovers in his apartment

It's hard to imagine that these cases occur so often in recent times, but there are quite a number of them. Dr. Katherine Ramsland looks at some of the most interesting and high-profile cases where individuals and couples have become obsessed with taking sex slaves.

There are four basic victim types and sometimes their stories lead to the grave and sometimes to freedom. The slave masters are also very diverse psychologically in the way they practice this deadly game of dominance and submission.

An upstate New York serial killer and his antisocial identical twin fuel debate over the heritable components of violent crime.

Five middle-aged men have been stripped naked, tied up and found strangled. There is no blood, no struggle, no witnesses and no suspects. It appears that a serial killer has a specific prey.... and a need for ATM cards. Can investigators link a bank photo to the person before he strikes again?

Child Abduction is a very complex crime and requires immediate action on the part of police, citizens and the media. Detective Mark Gado examines the nature of this crime, its frequency, the types of perpetrators and what is being done.

In the 1970s Atlanta was one of the most dangerous cities in the U.S. A series of murders of black children and teenagers began to emerge, throwing an unwelcome spotlight on the entire city. The murders, believed at that time, to be the work of a racist white group did nothing to recommend the city to tourists and new business opportunities.

Two black boys were found murdered at the end of July 1979, officially starting one of the most highly publicized murder series in history. A couple of years later, 29 black youths would be dead and a black man, Wayne Williams, who many people believe was railroaded by the government, would be imprisoned for life. Recent efforts to vindicate Williams have stalled.

Utah Mormon bookkeeper's compulsion for child pornography escalates to the abduction, torture and murder of five children.

Did this closet homosexual really kill 27 boys or was he the victim of drugged up young men who took advantage of his generosity? This is the true story of treachery, torture, mutilation and murder

It was in Polly's bedroom in an affluent California suburb that three girls were having a slumber party. The girls were giggling and playing a board game called Perfect Match when Polly decided it was time to fetch her friends' sleeping bags from the living room. She opened the bedroom door and saw a heavily muscled middle-aged man who was a complete stranger. He was holding a knife and immediately ordered, "Don't scream or Ill cut your throats!" "I'm not going to hurt you," he assured them.

"I'm just doing this for the money," he repeated. Then career criminal and rapist Richard Allen Davis carried 12-year-old Polly out of her home, raped and murdered her. This horrible ordeal has inspired hundreds of people to work on behalf of America's children, most prominently her father, Marc Klaas.

Now in a weird turn of events, John Mark Karr, who has connected himself to the murder of JonBenet Ramsey, was also obsessed with this brutal crime and had corresponded with Richard Allen Davis in prison.

Convicted child molester with a history of assaults on children going back to his teenage years, he is nonetheless released on bond when he again molests a youngster. This time, Duncan goes big time. He steals a car, goes to Idaho where stalks an entire family. Then he breaks in, brutally murders the adults and an older child and abducts the two younger children.

When Duncan tires of molesting the abducted boy, he kills him and throws him away. By sheer luck, the abducted girl gets the attention of people in a restaurant who recognize her from Amber Alerts and capture this serial killer and rescue the terrified child.

After serving 3 years of a 13-year sentence for the rape and abuse of 5 young girls, Belgian justice minister released him and a number of other sex offenders for good behavior. Two eight-year-old girls, kept in Dutrouxs dungeon starved to death while he was in prison.

Shortly after Dutroux's release from jail, more young girls disappeared around neighborhoods where Dutroux owned houses. Police twice searched his houses, but not well. Hidden in a secret sound-proof dungeon in the basement, two girls yearned for freedom. Vital facts concerning the girls disappearances were kept from other police investigators.

Police ignored a tip that Dutroux offered a man between $3,000 and $5,000 to kidnap young girls, hold them for him in a dungeon and later sell them into prostitution. Dutroux's own mother wrote prosecutors that her son had been keeping young girls in one of his houses. These vital clues about the missing girls were ignored. It would be another year before police would finally pay attention to what the informants had been telling them all along. During that year when nothing was done, other girls disappeared.

Marc Dutroux, a convicted pedophile, murderer and supposed leader of an international child pornography and prostitution ring, gained worldwide attention, not only because of the horrific nature of his crimes, but also the gross negligence and amateurism of police and government officials involved in the investigation. The Dutroux case caused such outrage in Belgium that it prompted one of the largest peacetime demonstrations since World War II and just about brought down the government.

This gentle-looking, benevolent grandfather cleverly lured children to their death, then devised recipes to eat them. This cannibal model for Hannibal Lecter is a study in criminal psychology and a true enigma. His wife thought him to be a wonderful husband and his children believed him to be a model father. What inner torments caused him to drive many spikes into his pelvis and tell people that he looked forward to his execution?

John Borowski's film about the demented child killer is an engaging piece of visual art that has raised the bar on this type of subject.

Suspected of murders of young women and children in France, Belgium and other European countries, he says he killed about 2 a year for a decade or more. An unbelievably botched French investigation and cover-up of potentially hi-level clients of a pedophile ring. A key investigator who would have exposed this scandal was killed just before the court presentation and his death made to look like a suicide. This case when it comes to trial will echo the Belgian government scandal with the Marc Dutroux case.

Young enlisted man murders boys and is convicted by forensic evidence. Sophisticated and beginning sleuths can follow the investigation and test their skills through short quizzes.

Most children murdered during stranger kidnappings are killed within a few hours. A close look at this serious problem and what can be done about it.

In 1997, London web site designer Trajce Koneva began a 6-year waking nightmare when he rushed home from work because his 12-year-old daughter, Katerina, didn't answer the phone after returning from school. When he got to his apartment, he chased a man he thought was a burglar, but lost him and called police. When he returned to his home, he found his daughter strangled. Initially, he was a suspect, but even though police released him, his wife and then his son held him responsible. Several years later, the family split up and the devastated father tried to kill himself.

Finally, years later, DNA tied Andrezej Kunowski to Katerina's murder and the rape of 30 children and young women in Poland and Britain completely vindicating the wronged father in the eyes of his family.

"The Monster of the Andes" murdered some 300 or more little girls as he roamed the poor neighborhoods of Ecuador, Colombia and Peru. He boasts now that he is the "Man of the Century," that no one will ever forget.

Charming Florida child is abducted from her home by drugged out repeat sex offender John Couey who stashes her in his sister's nearby trailer and rapes her repeatedly. When investigators come looking, he panics and buries her alive.

Saddleworth Moor, its long stretches of rugged earth, punctuated by steep valleys, sprawling hills, and rocky streams, was the silent witness of one of Britain's worst serial murders. Every few months another child would mysteriously disappear as he or she walked the moors between the villages. And so it might have continued for many more years had Myra Hindley's brother-in-law not seen Ian Brady take an axe to one of his young victims.

It was a real shocker in an era that could not imagine a woman participating in the brutal murder of children. Myra and Ian were the prototypes for Fred and Rose West, Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka and the other twisted partners in murder that followed them.

Incensed by the horrific crimes of killer pedophile Joseph Edward Duncan III, he poses as FBI agent to gain access to house with three sex offenders, killing two of them for revenge. Are offender registries really protecting the public from monsters like Duncan?

Little boy is out of his mother's site for a few minutes and disappears. The story of the first missing child to appear on a milk carton.

Air-tight alibi doesn't protect him from being convicted for the rape and murder of 13-year-old Peggy Cuttino. Is something very wrong with Sumter, S.C. justice?

Two beautiful 10-year-old girls are killed by the caretaker in their school - a man with many sexual assault accusations.

Mentally-ill man was a chief suspect after confessing to the "Charlie Chop-off" murders and sexual attacks on black boys in New York City's Harlem area. While never convicted of the crimes, he remains incarcerated in a mental institution.

South African serial killer is unusual in choosing both female prostitutes and adolescent boys as victims.

Violent alcoholic rapist and murder has father on death row convicted of rape and murder. Is Ward Weaver III the bad seed of a bad seed or was his admiration of his father the main factor behind his criminality?

Police work frantically to prevent prolific serial killer from being released. New information.

While he's in prison, his sister embezzles money from him. She makes a deal with prosecutors for leniency in exchange for info proving her brother killed a cop and is a sexual predator.