Top 10 Most Infamous and Notorious Serial Killers of the 1990s

Have you ever seen “Scream?” Well, Ghostface - and the story as a whole - was largely inspired by the crime spree of Danny Rolling. He’s perhaps better known as the Gainesville Ripper, his name coming from the Florida city in which he committed his murders. Over a course of four days in August of 1990, Rolling murdered a total of five college students after breaking into their apartments. He was eventually arrested after robbing a supermarket, and investigators were able to link him to the Gainesville killings. While in prison, Rolling would also confess to a triple homicide in Shreveport in November of 1989, bringing his total body count to eight. After feasting on lobster, Rolling was executed via lethal injection on October 25, 2006.

The creepy thing about serial killers is that they often hide in plain sight, posing as everymen with respectable jobs. Such was the case of Robert Lee Yates, who served in the U.S. Army while committing his grisly murders. Between 1975 and 1998, Yates killed at least sixteen people, with many of his crimes occurring in the city of Spokane[b], Washington. His violent streak ramped up in the mid ‘90s after retiring as an aircraft pilot, and between 1996 and 1998 he murdered at least thirteen women in the area of East Sprague Avenue. Yaes was finally arrested after a traffic stop linked his white Corvette to one of the victims, and he is currently serving his life sentence inside Washington State Penitentiary.

You might recognize the name Joel Rifkin from an episode of “Seinfeld,” as Elaine gets a boyfriend with the same name and begs him to change it owing to its notoriety. This episode was released in November 1993, just five months after Rifkin was arrested, his Mazda pickup containing the body of his final victim, Tiffany Bresciani[c]. Rifkin is thought to have murdered seventeen women in New York, with all but one murder occurring in the early 1990s. The victims were often killed by Rifkin after being picked up on the street, and their remains were deposited in remote areas and even roadside garbage bags. He was eventually found guilty of nine of the seventeen murders and sentenced to 203 years in prison.

Better known as The I-95 Killer owing to his primary hunting ground, Gary Ray Bowles murdered six men in 1994, with most of his victims living near the Interstate 95 highway. His crimes occurred across a swath of eight months, his first murder occurring on March 15 and his final on November 16. Throughout that time, Bowles even found himself on the FBI’s Most Wanted list, often posing as a sex worker, killing his clients, and then stealing their credit cards. According to Bowles, it all began after his girlfriend received an abortion upon learning that Bowles was a sex worker who often engaged with other men. He then developed a violent hatred toward homosexuals and began targeting them as a form of misplaced revenge.

Between 1978 and 1990, Andrei Chikatilo committed a series of brutal and sadistic murders that shocked the Soviet Union. Operating mainly in the Rostov Oblast[d], he was convicted of an astounding fifty-two killings, with eight occurring in 1990 alone. Chikatilo often lured destitute victims from train stations or bus stops with offers of help before murdering them in remote areas. He then mutilated the bodies, and while rumors of cannibalism circulated, Chikatilo denied it during his trial. Said legal proceedings were bizarre, with Chikatilo frequently singing, shouting, and rambling incoherently in court. On February 14, 1994, he was executed by a single bullet to the back of the head - the Soviet Union’s standard method of capital punishment at the time.

Between April and July of 1997, Andrew Cunanan murdered a total of five people. His first victim was a friend, Jeffrey Trail, whom Cunanan beat to death with a claw hammer in a Minneapolis apartment. He proceeded to kill his ex-boyfriend, David Madson, real estate developer Lee Miglin, and cemetery caretaker William Reese, who was killed solely for his vehicle. But his most famous kill by far is that of fashion mogul Gianni Versace, who was shot point blank and in broad daylight on the steps of his Miami mansion. Cunanan ultimately took his own life in the middle of an enormous manhunt, leaving his motives for the killings completely unclear.

Some of the most infamous and disturbing crimes in Canadian history were committed by husband-and-wife duo Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka. Shortly before Christmas of 1990, the villainous duo drugged Homolka’s sister Tammy, and she died after choking on her own vomit. Her death was ruled as an alcohol-related accident, as the duo had spiked her rum and eggnog. They got off scot free and proceeded to kidnap and murder two further girls, Leslie Mahaffy and Kristen French. When they were finally arrested, Homolka struck an extremely controversial plea deal, offering to rat on Bernardo in exchange for just twelve years in prison. He was sentenced to life. Homolka was released in 2005 and currently lives in Quebec.

Most people know Aileen Wuornos from Charlize Theron’s Oscar-winning performance in “Monster.” However, that film has been criticized for portraying Wuornos in a far more sympathetic light than she deserved. While “Monster” painted her as a victim, she was in reality a manipulative and conniving serial killer who murdered seven men between 1989 and 1990. Wuornos claimed that the men had assaulted her while she was engaging in sex work and that she killed them in self-defense. However, the prosecution successfully argued that the murders were financially motivated and that her self-defense claims were not credible. She was also found to be a clinical psychopath in a psychological assessment following her arrest. Wuornos ultimately received six death sentences and was executed on October 9, 2002.

It’s amazing how few people have heard of Samuel Little, considering he’s the most prolific serial killer in American history. While he was only convicted of eight murders, the FBI has confirmed at least sixty victims, and Little has confessed to ninety-three. Like many serial killers, he often targeted people who were less likely to be missed or thoroughly investigated, including sex workers and destitute victims he found on the street. He also tended to strangle his victims, leaving behind little physical evidence for police to work on. As such, Little went undetected for decades, his crimes beginning as early as the 1970s and stretching well into the ‘90s. He received four life sentences and died in prison in 2020 at the age of 80.

Samuel Little may be more prolific, but it was Jeffrey Dahmer who got all the attention. That speaks to the heinous severity of his crimes, the extent of which are infamous today. While Dahmer committed his first murder in 1978, his crimes ramped up in the late ‘80s before exploding in the early ‘90s. Between 1990 and 1991, Dahmer murdered twelve victims, with all being killed and stored in his Milwaukee apartment. It was during this time that Dahmer also attempted to make mindless “zombies” by pouring things like hydrochloric acid and boiling water into his victims’ brains. Dahmer was later beaten to death in prison by Christopher Scarver, who said that God told him to kill Dahmer in an act of divine justice.

Do you know of any other prolific killers in this time period? Let us know in the comments below!

[b]spoh-CAN https://youtu.be/3izhZ1Wjz1w?si=VrKY7d-ElfuY9OKU&t=3
SPRAYg https://youtu.be/3izhZ1Wjz1w?si=-EjkkKnk9LaqMMHG&t=5
[c]breshy-AWNNY https://youtu.be/CxBANhaYobI?si=tpH4QVFG78KoZLm0&t=2299
[d]RAW-stawv OBB-lst https://forvo.com/search/rostov/
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/oblast
[e]coo-NAW-nin https://youtu.be/tcmaMjmOxA0?si=-H_Eof548cvIhRH_&t=135
MIG-lin