Serial killers who made criminal history

One of the bloodiest serial killers in recent criminal history is German nurse Niels Högel, on trial for over 100 murders he admitted committing out of boredom.
Most of the worst serial killers in the forensic annals are psychopaths, who have been found criminally responsible for their actions. Here are some other notable cases:

The Chessboard Killer

In 2007, Russian Alexander Pitchouchkine was sentenced to life imprisonment for 48 murders. He killed his victims, mostly drunks he met in a park, by hammering, strangling or drowning them in the sewers. He had also thrown one of them from the 16th floor. He wanted the number of his kills to match the number of squares on a chessboard, i.e. 64.

Yang Xinhai

Chinese Yang Xinhai, 35, was executed in 2004 for 67 murders. From 2000 to 2003, he traveled by bicycle through China, breaking into houses at night and massacring their occupants with axes, hammers or shovels. Theft and rape are among the motives for his crimes but, according to the police, Yang is also driven by the pleasure of killing.

The Green River Killer

Gary Ridgway, a former auto body painter, was sentenced in December 2003 to life in prison for strangling 48 women, mostly prostitutes or runaways, between 1982 and 1984 in the Seattle area.
Nicknamed “the Green River killer” after the name of the river where his first five victims were found, he is the worst serial killer in the annals of American justice. “I killed so many women, I find it difficult to find my way around,” he said during his trial.

“Doctor Death”

Harold Shipman, a family doctor near Manchester, England, was sentenced in 2000 to life in prison for killing 15 people between 1975 and 1998 by injecting them with morphine. He hanged himself in his cell in 2004.
The following year, a lengthy official investigation credits Shipman, also nicknamed “Doctor Death”, with the murder of around 250 patients in his practice. The exact number of his victims could never be determined.

The Monster of Genova

Luis Alfredo Garavito, a street vendor nicknamed “the monster of Genova” after his hometown in Colombia, was sentenced to 835 years in prison in 2000 for the murder of 189 boys between the ages of 8 and 16 across the country.
Passing himself off as a handicapped person, an NGO employee or a monk, he lured his victims to isolated places by offering them sweets or money and making them drink with him before raping them, most of them, and kill them with knives or bullets. Some of the children were found decapitated. Four of his crimes were committed in Ecuador.

The Ogre of Rostov

In 1992, the Russian Andrei Tchikatilo was sentenced to death for having raped, killed and mutilated 52 teenagers, girls and young women between 1978 and 1990 across Russia, Ukraine and Uzbekistan. His weapons were “a knife, string, his hands and his teeth”, explains the examining magistrate, Viktor Burakov.
Nicknamed the “Ogre of Rostov”, Chikatilo, a married former teacher and quiet family man, was executed in 1994. The investigation was punctuated with errors, starting with the execution of an innocent man for murders committed by Chikatilo.

The Monster of the Andes

In 1980, Colombian Pedro Alonso Lopez Monsalve was arrested in a market in Ambato, Ecuador, after trying to kidnap a young girl. He then admits to having strangled at least 310 children from disadvantaged backgrounds in Ecuador, Colombia and Peru.
Initially accused of the rape and murder of four children in Ecuador, he leads the police to a field where 53 other corpses of young girls are buried. Sentenced to 16 years in prison, the maximum sentence in Ecuador, he was extradited in 1994 to Colombia where he was interned in a psychiatric hospital. Released a few years later, it disappeared from circulation. He would be 70 years old today.