What says Sunday more than prolific serial killers? I thought I’d keep the Halloween theme going with a look at some real-life monsters: serial killers. A serial killer is defined as a person that has killed three or more people over the course of at least a month, with breaks in between. These aren’t just any serial killers, these are the most prolific in history, killing way the hell more than three people.
Our first subject is the only American serial killer in the top ten list of most prolific serial killers. That dishonor falls to Gary Leon Ridgway, better known as the “Green River Killer”. Ridgway grew up as the middle-child of a troubled family. Violent arguments between his parents were a common occurrence.
Ridgway first showed signs of trouble as a teenager. At the age of 16, he led a six year old boy into the woods and stabbed him in the ribs. The boy’s liver was injured, but he survived. The future serial killer reportedly walked away from the boy saying, “I always wondered what it would be like to kill someone.”
While married twice, both marriages ended bitterly with both partners admitting to infidelity. Somewhat ironically, Ridgway became quite religious around the time he got married for the second time. Part of his mental instability is believed to be linked to struggling between his religious beliefs and an insatiable sex drive. He both denounced prostitutes and visited them frequently.
The result of this mental wrestling match was a minimum of 71 murdered women. The victims were believed to be made up of prostitutes and runaways picked up along the highway. Most of the bodies were dumped at sites around Green River, hence his serial killer moniker. The exact number of victims could be higher. Ridgway himself has said that he’s killed so many women that he had lost count.
Yang Xinhai of China may not have been quite as prolific as the Green River killer, but the way the “Monster Killer” brutally and senselessly butchered his victims takes him a step above. Yang was also convicted of all of his known murders. Ridgway may have killed 71-plus women, but was only convicted of 49 murders.
China’s most prolific serial killer was born in 1948 to one of the poorest families in his village. The youngest of four children, Yang was very clever but very introverted. He eventually dropped out of school and set out on his own. He traveled China working as a hired hand.
Yang’s murder spree took place between 1999 and 2003. He would sneak into a family’s home in the middle of the night and kill everyone inside using axes, hammers, and shovels. This at times meant killing entire families at once. Perhaps Yang’s most brutal attack resulted in the murder of a father and his six year old daughter. He then violently raped the man’s pregnant wife, who miraculously survived with serious head injuries.
The undisputed “king of death” hails from peaceful Colombia, where nothing bad ever happens and unicorns fart rainbows. Surely the fact that the top-three most prolific serial killers are from there is surely just coincidence, right? Luis Garavito beats the other two by being convicted of an unholy 138 murders, but possibly having been responsible for 400-plus deaths.
“La Bestia” (“The Beast”) had a textbook tragic childhood. He is the oldest of seven brothers, all of whom suffered at the hands of their father. All seven brothers were allegedly physically and mentally abused by their father on a regular basis. Garavito himself described being regularly sexually abused by his father in testimony at his trial.
The abuse handed down by his father clearly warped Garavito’s mind. His victims of choice were street children between the ages of 8 and 16. “The Beast” would approach them with small gifts or small amounts of money to gain their trust. He’d then lead them on a walk out of town. They would walk until the child would become too tired to continue.
Garavito would then proceed to molest and rape them, ultimately cutting their throats and most-often dismembering their dead bodies. The remains of his victims often showed signs of torture. He was convicted on 139 murder charges. However, because of Colombian law, Garavito could be out of prison in 22 years or less.
That, ladies and gentlemen, is the scariest part of this entire article.