10 Conspiracy Theories About Serial Killers
10 Conspiracy Theories About Serial Killers
Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we’re looking at ten of the most popular - and outlandish - conspiracy theories regarding famous serial killers.
The Cecil Hellmouth
Richard Ramirez
The Night Stalker terrorized California with a series of random and brutal home invasions in the mid 1980s, murdering at least fifteen people and leaving many more injured and scarred. During his crime spree, Ramirez frequently stayed at the Cecil Hotel in Los Angeles. And because the Cecil has a remarkably dark history, a paranormal conspiracy was born. It claims that the hotel sits atop a literal “hellmouth”, or some kind of demonic vortex that spews out dark energy. So, naturally, Ramirez wasn’t just a psychopath, but an avatar possessed and energized by the hotel's supernatural forces. Yes, basically an IRL Jack Torrance. Of course, the “hellmouth” theory is really just a classic case of confirmation bias, an attempt to put a supernatural spin on urban decay and mental illness.
The Headless Decoy
Belle Gunness
This killer was an early 20th century Black Widow who posted lonely hearts ads, lured wealthy men to her Indiana farm, and murdered them. In 1908, her farmhouse burned to the ground. In the ashes, police found her children alongside the body of a woman missing her head. The logical conclusion is that this was Gunness. But here’s where it gets weird. Gunness’s hired hand Ray Lamphere was convicted of arson for the fire, and he later confessed that Gunness had ordered him to do it. He also claims that she murdered an innocent woman to serve as a decoy, and true to his claim, the headless body was notably shorter and lighter than Gunness. To this day, it has never been definitively proven whether Gunness died in that fire or pulled off the ultimate escape.
The Elite Cover-Up Hit
Jeffrey Dahmer
The famous cannibal was beaten to death in 1994 by Christopher Scarver, a fellow inmate at the Columbia Correctional Institution. Yet a persistent internet fringe theory insists that this was not a random act of prison violence, but a planned assassination orchestrated by the government. Theorists claim that Dahmer wasn’t just a troubled man from Milwaukee, but a procurement agent for a global syndicate of wealthy, elite cannibals. According to this wild conspiracy, Dahmer was preparing to blow the whistle and name high ranking politicians, prompting the shadow government to activate Scarver to silence him forever. In reality, there is absolutely zero evidence tying Dahmer to any external organization, and Scarver’s motives for the murder were entirely his own, driven by schizophrenia and a deep personal disgust for Dahmer’s gruesome crimes.
The Nationwide Snuff Ring
John Wayne Gacy
Easily one of the most popular serial killers in American history, John Wayne Gacy earned notoriety both for his horrific crimes and for working as a clown. But the theory here has nothing to do with his infamous pastime. Because Gacy was connected in both business and politics, a sprawling conspiracy theory alleges he was merely the “disposal man” for a nationwide human trafficking ring known as The Delta Project. In fact, The Delta Project was a real thing, and it was co-run by a man named Phillip Paske. And wouldn’t you know it, Paske was briefly employed by Gacy in the 1970s. Gacy later claimed in jailhouse interviews that he did not act alone and that his home was used by multiple people, mirroring the “dorms” used by the Delta Project.
The Process Church Cult
David Berkowitz
If there’s one recurring theme in serial killer conspiracies, it’s that they didn’t work alone. When David Berkowitz was arrested for the Son of Sam shootings, he famously claimed that a neighbor’s demon-possessed dog commanded him to kill. He has since admitted that this story was fake and that he just used it for attention. However, journalist Maury Terry spent years championing a theory that Berkowitz was just the fall guy for something called The Process Church of the Final Judgment. This was supposedly a highly organized Satanic cult with underground networks stretching from New York to California. Proponents argue that Berkowitz didn’t act alone, but was rather a low-level member covering for the cult’s actual hitmen, who were carrying out a master plan of societal terror.
The MKUltra Sleeper Agent
Ted Bundy
And if it’s not some secret cabal of killers and sex offenders, it’s the government. Ted Bundy is perhaps the most famous serial killer ever, known far and wide for his high body count, good looks, and charisma. And because he was so smart, and because he was in university in the 1960s, a fringe theory attempts to tie him to the CIA. Some believe that Bundy was a rogue test subject for MKUltra, the very real and very controversial CIA program that experimented on citizens around that time. Perhaps the government scrambled Bundy’s brain using LSD and hypnosis, intending to turn him into a covert sleeper assassin. But the experiment supposedly broke his psyche, resulting in him becoming a serial killer instead.
The CIA Psy-Op
Charles Manson
How do you stop the hippies? You brainwash a cult leader and have him kill famous people, apparently. Building heavily on the theme of government paranoia, this theory alleges that Charles Manson was an active intelligence asset working for the CIA. The idea is that the U.S. government was terrified of the growing hippie counterculture of the 1960s, specifically how it contradicted and protested the Vietnam war movement. So they brainwashed Manson to commit the famous Tate-LaBianca murders. The goal of the psy-op was to completely discredit the left in the eyes of the public, painting hippies as little more than murderous vagabonds. Even if the CIA link isn’t true, there’s still no denying that the Manson Family was highly influential in killing the hippie movement for good.
The Murder Castle
H.H. Holmes
We suppose this one is less “conspiracy theory” and more “wildly exaggerated story.” Basically everyone knows by now that H.H. Holmes built a labyrinthine hotel in Chicago for the 1893 World’s Fair. He then attended the Fair to pick up ladies, took them back to his castle, and murdered them with soundproof gas chambers and giant acid vats. Only, most modern historians have thoroughly debunked this story, arguing that the “castle” was just a poorly constructed building. Yes, there were multiple hidden rooms, but they were used to stash stolen goods, not corpses. Holmes was a con man first and foremost. And yes, he did kill people, but not in the way the famous story suggests. It was almost always someone he knew personally, and usually as part of a larger financial scheme.
It Was Lewis Carroll
Jack the Ripper
This famous serial killer from London was never caught, and many people have been linked to him. Including Lewis Carroll. Back in 1996, Richard Wallace published a book claiming that the famous author of “Alice in Wonderland” was the shadowy Jack the Ripper all along. His entire theory rested on anagrams. He took random paragraphs from Carroll's books and rearranged the letters to form sentences where Carroll supposedly confessed to the gruesome murders. It is absolutely bonkers. Carroll would probably be proud if it didn’t besmirch his name. Unfortunately, the theory is not only extremely libelous, but it also relies entirely on parlor tricks rather than legitimate criminology. You can make an anagram out of almost any lengthy text if you try hard enough.
It Was Ted Cruz All Along
The Zodiac Killer
We can’t mention famous serial killer conspiracies without mentioning Ted Cruz as the Zodiac. This actually started as a joke on Twitter back in 2013, but by the 2016 presidential election, it had morphed into a massive viral phenomenon. The internet was flooded with side-by-side photo comparisons between Cruz and the original police sketches of the Zodiac, and some people genuinely started to believe they were one and the same. The whole goofy thing led to mainstream news articles, late-night talk show monologues, and even merchandise referencing the theory. There are just a few problems with this. For example, the Zodiac murders occurred in the late 1960s, primarily 1969. Ted Cruz was born in 1970. So, you know. It probably wasn’t him.
Do you subscribe to any of these theories? Let us know in the comments below!
