JCC greatest serial killer of all time

who's the greatest of all time? im gonna hold off on my answer for a bit, but i rather think those unfortunate enough to pay close attention to my posting might be able to guess

i realize there are a lot of missing names so i tried to pick ones that had the most reliably high kill counts and/or the most impact on the national/international psyche. obviously i would have liked to include more names, but you can click the other tab and comment with anyone you think should have been included

i have intentionally left out Gein, despite his impact on culture, because he was more of a grave robber and murderer than a true "serial killer", imho. i also left out notable unidentified killers like zodiac and jack the ripper because who knows if they were really one person or not? if you want to make a case for them, well, that's what the "other" tab is for

no fictional serial killers please. "team" killers are allowed i guess but i think lone wolves are more to the point

and to get it out of the way, yeah, the greatest of all time is probably someone who never got caught and managed to fly under the radar, amassing mountains of victims without the general public or authorities ever being aware of any pattern... but that's a cop out so...

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilles_de_Rais

 

you would pick a dude whose name was "jill"

 

Picked "other." Answer: Religions.

 

delete your account

 

Eh?

 

It's hard to narrow it down. Torquemada? I guess that's as good an individual as any for it!

Edit: though I did more fully read the post under the voting tab now, so I understand the parameters of the intent, now.

 

eh, im being lazy, but i was trying to prod you into elaborating. make a case if you get a chance. wiki tells us who he was, but you havent made a case for him being the GOAT

 

Where's Elizabeth Bathory?

 

I just thought of him because he's a pre-modern serial killer, a companion of Joan of Arc, and his M.O. is quite disturbing. I don't know about GOAT, though.

 

Ender Sai i thought about it but decided i consider her semi-fictional. also she had a huge team of accomplices and complicit people. if we include bathory in serious contention we might as well consider seventhbeacon's answer. or the inevitable person who posts "hitler"

 

MAIK, she had a proto-black metal band named after her, and the singer's name was Quothorn. When your thematic and periodic executions reach this level of brvtal then you can speak like that.

 

Bundy. No way Holmes puts up those numbers in the modern era.

I'd say maybe Corll could be in the conversation, but he relied to much on his gang, and, well, you see where that got him.

 

i don't know a lot about serial killers, but from observing the media coverage of the cases throughout my own lifetime i feel like bundy had the greatest cultural impact, even though gacy was maybe scarier and dahmer was more extreme. i think bundy was the most truly frightening, because he was handsome and charismatic and at first glance decidedly not a weirdo. mark harmon played him in that tv movie, and it was kind of like well if we can't even trust mark harmon anymore then no one is hitchhiking ever again. i think also that sort of every man quality is what makes him kind of fascinating. someone who is just an evil, sadistic monster isn't much of a puzzle. but that there could be this person who seemed so normal on the surface, but was really masking this deep well of darkness, it makes for the kind of complicated villain people can't help but find interesting.

 

okay now im gonna jump the gun and concur on bundy. his exploits are larger than life. escaping jail twice? going ham on a sorority house full of women with a log?! manipulating the law into allowing him to marrying a woman during his trial while in court and then fathering a child on that woman while on death row, despite conjugals not being allowed? and his cultural impact was prodigious, doing more to put serial killing in the public mind than anyone since jack the ripper

bundy is the MBP: Most Bundiest Playa'

 

Also, to continue with what tom was saying: he was also the best at hiding it. Even up until his death his mask never broke (I think maybe there was a moment during the trial, but). Getting interviewed by James Dobson, talking about how the pornos made him do it. Just an everyday, normal guy misguided by the pornography! And the good "Doctor" is right there nodding along with him.

 

i think after the guilty verdict his reaction was to bellow "TELL THE JURY THEY'RE WRONG!" i think that was the moment the mask slipped that you're thinking of

which, again, that's a pretty GSKOAT moment in and of itself

 

I went for the Other option: Yorkshire Ripper. Because that name.

 

this is an interesting point for discussion, i think. i dont think anyone can put up the numbers of a bundy or a holmes in the current age of social media. smart phones and social media mean that people are too connected to one another's whereabouts. we've had some GOAT contenders for spree killers in the last decade but really nobody on the serial killing side. i don't think its because conditions aren't right to create the psyche of a great serial killer, but rather because nowadays they get caught before they get too far into their careers. we may never see the likes of a bundy or a holmes or a gacy again

it just sounds like he really likes pudding

 

I didn't go with Gacy because for one he had no style, and for two he benefited from performance enhancing head injury.

 

bundy had a head injury too.

as im sure you're aware, but which bears repeating for those reading along: the majority of serial killers/spree killers/etc had head injuries in their formative years

EDIT: WHOOPS i remembered wrong. apparently bundy is the exception to the brain injury thing. he never claimed any head trauma in his medical histories and extensive brain scans revealed no abnormalities or damage. M. B. P.

 

Whichever one that Rogue Number Ten always fantasizes about the love child he supposedly had.

 

Oh, he liked his pudding alright!

 

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/u...murdering-two-strangers-in-park-a6996301.html

Rogue_Ten

 

I was about to say that I don't remember reading that he had, but of course was ready to take your word for it, since it is so prevalent.


Also, I think that while the big leagues might be over here in the U.S., there's certainly room for future GOATs in other parts of the globe. For example Yongming in China. But even then his numbers are pretty low, as far as convictions go, but the unofficial number is still mid-twenties. Still, very depraved (e.g. selling children jerky to people as ostrich meat). Plus he had already been convicted in the 70s for murder, so who knows how many others he did before that (although I guess that would not technically count as modern at that point).