20 Worst Psychopaths to Have Ever Lived

David Berkowitz, AKA The Son of Sam

Even as a child, the signs of psychopathy were there for Berkowitz, who would become known as the Son of Sam. As well as threatening behavior, he was known to start fires. In 1976, Berkowitz began targeting random people in New York City and taking their lives. By 1977, hed killed 6 people. By chance, a survivor saw Berkowitzs car get a parking ticket, leading to his arrest. During questioning, Berkowitz claimed he was told to kill by a demon possessing his neighbors dog, hence his moniker. However, he later admitted this was a hoax. In 1978, after being declared competent to stand trial, Berkowitz pleaded guilty to his murders and received 6 consecutive life sentences.

Marcel Petiot

It takes a psychopath to take advantage of victimized people, and that was certainly the case with Petiot during World War 2. When Germany occupied France, Petiot set up an underground network to help Jewish people escape persecution for a fee. At least, thats what he advertised. In reality, Petiot lured them to his home and gave them a vaccination that was actually a fatal poison. In 1944, after neighbors had alerted the authorities due to a foul smell coming from Petiots home, his crimes were discovered as they found human remains and a lot of luggage. While he was convicted of 26 murders, its believed the number could be over 60. In 1946, Petiot was executed.

Leonard Lake

Many psychopaths enjoy abusing animals as a child. That was the case with Lake, who when young used chemicals to dispose of mice. In 1985, he was arrested for shoplifting. During questioning, he took his own life. The investigation led the police to a cabin in Wilseyville, California, where human remains, a dungeon, journals of the crimes, and videotapes of abuse to victims were found. For several years, Lake and accomplice Charles Ng had been abducting, abusing, and murdering people at the remote cabin. In 1999, Ng was convicted of 11 murders and sentenced to death. While the cabin seemingly had human remains belonging to 11 people, its speculated, due to Lakes journals, that there could be 25 victims.

John Cribb

According to forensic psychologist Tim Watson-Munro, Cribb is an end-of-the-line psychopath and the closest hes come to evil simpliciter. In 1978, Cribb broke into a house in the Baulkham Hills suburb in Sydney, Australia, taking Valda Connell and two of her children hostage. After assaulting Connell, he left the trio in the wilderness, only to change his mind and take their lives. After crashing his car, the bodies were found in the trunk. Cribb was sent to a psychiatric hospital, but he escaped. After armed robberies, he then assaulted teenagers before being arrested. In jail, he sent Christmas cards to taunt his victims. In 1979, Cribb was sentenced to 3 consecutive life sentences plus 42 years before dying in 2018.

Béla Kiss

In 1916, a landlord wanted to renovate the property that Kiss was renting in Cinkota, Hungary. However, hed been conscripted into the army 2 years before. When the workers went into Kisss workshop to search for materials, they instead found several tin drums. When they opened them, they discovered bodies submerged in alcohol. During the search of the property, 24 bodies were found, and letters from Kiss to many more women, too. Seemingly, hed been defrauding them with the promise of love, only to take their money and lives. When the authorities heard Kiss was at a Serbian hospital, they rushed there. However, hed already escaped. While there have been sightings worldwide, Kiss was never caught.

John Wayne Gacy, AKA The Killer Clown

After being arrested in 1968 for assaulting a teenager, Gacy was diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder, which is closely tied to psychopathy. Despite this, he was eventually released after serving 18 months of a 10-year sentence. By 1972, Gacy began taking lives. He lured men and boys to his property in Norwood Park Township in Chicago, Illinois. Gacy would then restrain them, often pretending to do a magic trick since he moonlighted as a clown before killing them. The disappearance of Robert Piest in 1978 led the police to Gacy, where they discovered human remains hidden in his homes crawl space. In 1980, Gacy was found guilty of 33 murders and was sentenced to death, which was enacted in 1994.

Pedro López, AKA The Monster of the Andes

Known as The Monster of the Andes, López preyed across multiple countries in South America. In 1980, he was arrested in Ecuador for attempting to abduct a girl. While in jail, alongside him was an officer posing as a prisoner. López proudly proclaimed to his cellmate the many, many lives he'd taken. In 1980, he received the maximum sentence of 16 years for taking 110 lives, but its speculated it could be over 300. Upon his release in 1994, López described himself as the man of the century. When he was deported to Columbia, the cops were unable to charge him with anything but sent him to a psychiatric hospital. After his release, López vanished in 1999 and hasnt been seen since.

Uday Hussein

His father Saddam was sadistic, but Uday is far worse. Egypts former president Hosni Mubarak even called him a psychopath after he killed Kamel Hana Gegeo at Mubaraks wifes birthday party in 1988. Hussein was appointed by his father as chairman of the Iraqi Olympic Committee and the Iraq Football Association. Rather than stick to boardrooms, he would abduct what he felt were underperforming athletes, take them to his private prison, and then abuse them. Hussein was also tied to several more murders and was alleged to assault women and girls, sometimes fatally. In 2002, during the Iraq War, US soldiers killed Hussein and his brother Qusay.

Jeffrey Dahmer, AKA The Milwaukee Monster

In 1991, when police officers in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, were flagged down by a frantic and half-handcuffed Tracy Edwards, they had no idea what they were in for. Edwards took them back to the apartment he'd escaped, where they found Dahmer. During the investigation, the cops uncovered photos of bodies taken inside the property and human remains in the fridge and within a large drum. Diagnosed with several personality disorders, Dahmer confessed to taking 16 lives and consuming some. Over the space of 2 trials in 1992, Dahmer, with 17 victims, was sentenced to 16 counts of murder, earning him life imprisonment. In 1994, he was killed by fellow inmate Christopher Scarver.

Adolf Hitler

After rising to power in 1933, Hitler transformed Germany into a cruel machine to wipe out anyone who wasnt Aryan. As well as provoking World War 2 in 1939, he instigated mass genocide through his parliamentary forces and with extinction camps. The latter took the lives of around 6 million Jewish people across Europe and millions more with backgrounds Hitler disliked. Its estimated that up to 85 million perished from the war, making it the most out of any human conflict. When he realized he was set to lose, Hitler took his own life in 1945. While he wasnt formally diagnosed with any mental illness, researchers have theorized he was a psychopath due to sharing several traits linked to the condition.

Richard Ramirez, AKA The Night Stalker

Richard Ramirez brought terror to California in the 1980s. His M.O. was home invasion, followed by heinous crimes. He boasted about 15 victims, yet there are probably more. Ramirez came from a troubled childhood, as his father was a violent man with alcohol use disorder. This likely contributed to his psyche, as did physical brain trauma from the events. As well, his cousin Mike was a wartime Green Beret and would sometimes share gruesome photographs with Richard, who claimed he was fascinated rather than offended by the images. In addition to a traumatic childhood, Ramirez showed impulsiveness, criminal versatility, and lack of remorse: all traits on the Hare Psychopathy Checklist.

Albert Fish, AKA The Gray Man

Albert Fish was born in 1870, and was once placed into an orphanage for about 5 years. In the orphanage, he suffered harsh physical punishments, at which point Fish noticed that such violence caused him pleasure. He found himself fascinated with mutilation after seeing anatomical bisections at a museum. Fish would also attack himself, displaying the tendencies often seen in psychopaths. Fish would capture young people and claimed numerous victims. On the psychopath checklist, Fish would tick off lack of empathy and remorse as well as impulsivity, among many others.

Albert DeSalvo, AKA The Boston Strangler

Albert DeSalvo took the lives of over a dozen women between 1962 and 1964, in most cases by entering their apartments. DeSalvo was initially convicted in late 1964 for a series of crimes dubbed the Green Man attacks. In custody, he confessed to many crimes. Much like others on this list, DeSalvo grew up in a problematic home: his father tormented his wife in front of their children. DeSalvo began to mistreat animals at age 12. Forensic psychologist J. Reid Meloy points out that psychopaths tend to devalue their victims. DeSalvo would don his victims with neckties and position their bodies in horrible ways: a form of posthumous devaluation in turning them into displayed objects.

Dennis Rader, AKA The BTK Killer

Dennis Rader was convicted of 10 killings that took place between 1974 and 1991. Rader, like numerous others on this list, also displayed typically brutal animal mistreatment in his youth, capturing and killing them. His main motivation was realizing his twisted fantasies, hence the nickname he gave himself, BTK. He is an unconventional psychopath to some experts, as one of the key traits is lack of acknowledging responsibility for ones actions. Rader sent taunting letters to media outlets and law enforcement, boasting about his crimes. Though he ticks the grandiose sense of self-worth box, boasting about responsibility separates him from some textbook psychopaths.

Elizabeth Báthory, AKA The Blood Countess

Though her guilt is actually still debated by historians, Hungarian Elizabeth Bathory was a countess who lived between 1560 and 1614 and allegedly took the lives of around 600 young women. Many of her victims were sent to her by their families in order to learn proper etiquette, a typical practice at the time. She is said to have bathed in blood in order to maintain her youthful appearance, but this is also highly debatable. Bathory reportedly displayed mental health issues from the age of 5, and was exposed to executions and the beatings of servants from a young age. She also displayed obvious disturbed public behaviors in her adult life, watching others suffer for pleasure or harming them herself.

Vlad the Impaler, AKA Vlad III, AKA Vlad Dracula

Vlad III was born somewhere between 1428 and 1431, second son to eventual leader of Wallachia Vlad Dracul (recognize that?). Dracul was a member of the Order of the Dragon, a society that opposed the Ottoman conquest of Europe. As a result of this, little Vlad and his brother Radu were taken hostage by Ottoman Sultan Murad II in an attempt to gain Draculs loyalty. After this ordeal, Vlads father and older brother were killed. When in power, Vlad had a particular penchant for impaling his enemies and leaving them to die. He was responsible for an estimated 80, 000 deaths. Some psychological researchers claimed Vlad fit the Dark Triad mold, which consists of Machiavellianism, narcissism and psychopathy.

H.H. Holmes

Dr. Herman Webster Mudgett, better known as H.H. Holmes, was a career criminal guilty of a number of crimes including forgery, illegal marriage and causing deaths. He is best known as the proprietor of the Murder Castle, which was subject to so many sensationalized stories that its impossible to give an actual account of its layout or events. Holmes childhood was harsh, as is the case with most of the others on this list. His father had an alcohol use disorder and he was treated badly by his schoolmates due to his academic proficiencies. Holmes became obsessed with anatomy and dissection, performing the latter on animals. He was convicted of causing only one death, but is presumed to have committed four more and is suspected of nine.

Ed Gein, AKA The Butcher of Plainfield

Ed Gein was a killer and body snatcher (exhuming and stealing human remains from cemeteries). Gein was born to a militantly religious mother, Augusta. Augusta would forbid her children from making friends, contributing to Eds poor social skills. The family farm went to Edward upon the deaths of his family members. He reportedly boarded up all rooms used by his mother, leaving them spotless compared to the rooms in which he lived. Gein was eventually discovered to have fashioned a long list of objects from human body parts, for example skull bowls and a skin lampshade. Gein was diagnosed with schizophrenia and also with psychopathy, which will surprise no one.

Charles Manson

Charles Manson was understandably evaluated a number of times while imprisoned, resulting in various diagnoses such as schizophrenia and personality disorders. After Mansons death, his initial evaluations by psychologist Tod Roy were publicly released, giving other professionals the chance to weigh in. More modern researchers claimed Manson was more on the bipolar spectrum displaying psychopathic, narcissistic and antisocial behaviors. Manson attracted followers easily, a sign of grandiose self-worth as seen on the Hare checklist. His Rorschach test answers were apparently consistent with under 1% of comparable results. He also came from a troubled childhood with a neglectful mother, unstable father figures and time spent in a boys school where he was beaten for the smallest infractions.

Ted Bundy

The infamous Ted Bundy confessed to dozens of horrific crimes between 1974 and 1978. Though recollections of his childhood are scattered (with differing stories from different people, including Bundy himself), it is seemingly the case that he never had a clear father figure. He was made to believe his grandparents were his actual parents, and his mother his sister. The truth clearly marked him in some way. Bundy was initially diagnosed a psychopath by prominent psychiatrist Hervey Cleckley in the late 1970s, yet has subsequently also received many other psychiatric diagnoses and designations. Bundy had a successful mask of sanity: he could easily charm his victims into trusting him.

What other horrible psychopaths did we miss from the video? Let us know below.