60 Serial killers who died in prison custody

Juhani Aataminpoika, alias Kerpeikkari, was a Finnish serial killer. He killed 12 people in southern Finland between October and November in 1849. He has been characterized as the first serial killer in Finland.

Benjamin Thomas "Tony" Atkins, also known as The Woodward Corridor Killer, was an American serial killer and rapist who murdered, tortured, and raped 11 women, mostly prostitutes and drug addicts, in Highland Park and Detroit, Michigan, during a period of nine months between December 1991 and August 1992.

Marie Alexandrine Becker, nicknamed "The Black Widow", was a Belgian serial killer who was sentenced to death for poisoning eleven people between 1933 and 1936, and attempting to poison five others. Since capital punishment in Belgium had not been applied since 1863, her sentence was commuted to life imprisonment.

Robert Andrew Berdella Jr. was an American serial killer, known as The Kansas City Butcher and The Collector, who kidnapped, raped, tortured, and murdered at least six men between 1984 and 1987 in Kansas City, Missouri after having forced his victims to endure periods of up to six weeks of captivity.

Marco Bergamo, known as The Monster of Bolzano, was an Italian serial killer who murdered five women between 1985 and 1992.

Richard Fran Biegenwald was an American serial killer who committed his crimes in Monmouth County, New Jersey. Between 1958 and 1983, Biegenwald killed at least six people, and he is suspected in at least two other murders.

Elfriede Blauensteiner, dubbed the "Black Widow", was an Austrian serial killer who murdered at least three victims by poison. In each case, she inherited the victim's possessions.

Jerome Henry "Jerry" Brudos was an American serial killer and necrophile who committed the murders of at least four women in Oregon between 1968 and 1969.

Carol M. Bundy was an American serial killer. Bundy and Doug Clark became collectively known as the Sunset Strip Killers after being convicted of a series of murders in Los Angeles during the late spring and early summer of 1980. The victims were young sex workers or runaways.

Angelo Anthony Buono Jr. was an American serial killer, kidnapper and rapist, who together with his adopted cousin Kenneth Bianchi were known as the Hillside Stranglers, and were convicted of killing ten young women in Los Angeles, California between October 1977 and February 1978.

Joseph Gerard Christopher was an American serial killer who gained infamy for a series of murders in the early 1980s. He is believed to have killed at least twelve individuals and wounded numerous others.

Faye Della Copeland and Ray Copeland became, at the ages of 69 and 76 respectively, the oldest couple ever sentenced to death in the United States. They were convicted of killing five drifters at their farm in Mooresville, Missouri. When her sentence was commuted to life in prison in 1999, Faye Copeland was the oldest woman on death row.

Juan Vallejo Corona was a Mexican serial killer who was convicted of the murders of 25 migrant farm workers found buried in shallow graves in peach orchards along the Feather River in Sutter County, California, United States in 1971. At the time, the crimes were characterized as among the most notorious in U.S. history. The exact victim total remains unknown and may be significantly higher, according to local authorities.

Mary A. Cowan, known as The Borgia of Maine, was an American serial killer who poisoned two husbands and four children between 1884 and 1894, and attempted to murder a third husband. Convicted of killing her step-son Willis Cowan in September 1894, Cowan was sentenced to life imprisonment and sent off to the Maine State Prison, where she died a few years later from an unspecified illness.

Thomas Lee Dillon was an American serial killer who shot and killed five men in southeastern Ohio, beginning April 1, 1989 and continuing until April 1992.

Nannie Doss was an American serial killer responsible for the deaths of 11 people between some time in the 1920s and 1954. Nannie Doss was referred to as the Giggling Granny, the Lonely Hearts Killer, the Black Widow, and Lady Blue Beard. She was called a "self-made widow" by a newspaper.

Edward Wayne Edwards was a convicted American serial killer. Edwards escaped from jail in Akron, Ohio in 1955 and fled across the country, holding up gas stations. By 1961, he was on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list.

Walter E. Ellis, also known as the Milwaukee North Side Strangler, was an American serial killer who raped and strangled at least seven women in the city of Milwaukee, Wisconsin between 1986 and 2007.

Larry William Eyler was an American serial killer who is believed to have murdered a minimum of twenty-one teenage boys and young men in a series of killings committed between 1982 and 1984 in the Midwestern States. Convicted and sentenced to death by lethal injection for the 1984 kidnapping and murder of 16-year-old Daniel Bridges, Eyler later voluntarily confessed to the 1982 murder of 23-year-old Steven Ray Agan, offering to also confess to his culpability in twenty further unsolved homicides if the state of Illinois would commute his sentence to one of life imprisonment without parole.

Bobby Jack Fowler was an American rapist and serial killer active in the United States and Canada. He died in prison of lung cancer during a 16-year sentence following a conviction for rape, kidnapping and attempted rape in Newport, Oregon, in 1996.

Kendall Francois was a serial killer from Poughkeepsie, New York, convicted of killing eight women, from 1996 to 1998. After his conviction and sentencing, Francois was housed in the Attica Correctional Facility until being transferred to the Wende Correctional Facility shortly before his death. It was revealed in his trial in 2000 that he tested positive for HIV in 1995, but this was not said to have been related to his death.

Leonard John Fraser, also known as "The Rockhampton Rapist", was an Australian convicted serial killer.

Gerald Armond Gallego and Charlene Adell Gallego are two American serial killers who terrorized Sacramento, California between 1978 and 1980. They murdered ten victims, mostly teenagers, most of whom they kept as sex slaves before killing them.

Cayetano Santos Godino, also known as "El Petiso Orejudo", was an Argentinian serial killer who terrorized Buenos Aires at the age of 16. In the early 20th century, he was responsible for the murder of four children, the attempted murder of another seven children, and seven counts of arson.

William Gohl was a German-American serial killer who, while working as a union official, murdered sailors passing through Aberdeen, Washington. He murdered for an unknown period of time and was a suspect in dozens of murders until his capture in 1910. Spared from the death penalty by a request for leniency by the jury, he was sentenced to life in prison at Walla Walla State Penitentiary where he died in 1927 from lobar pneumonia and erysipelas complicated by dementia paralytic caused by syphilis.

Caroline Grills, was an Australian serial killer, whose modus operandi was poisoning her victims.

Lonnie David Franklin Jr., better known by the nickname Grim Sleeper, was an American serial killer who was responsible for at least ten murders and one attempted murder in Los Angeles, California from 1985 to 2007. He was also convicted for rape and sexual violence. Franklin earned his nickname when he appeared to have taken a fourteen-year break from his crimes, from 1988 to 2002.

Francisco Guerrero Pérez (1840–1910), also known as Antonio Prida, was a Mexican serial killer in the late 19th century. He was the first serial killer to be captured in Mexico, although he was not the country's first recorded serial killer. Guerrero killed approximately twenty female prostitutes in Mexico City between 1880 and 1888. He also killed one woman whose status as a prostitute has been inconsistently reported.

Archibald Thomson Hall, also known as Roy Fontaine was a Scottish serial killer and thief. Born in Glasgow, Scotland, he became known as the Killer Butler or the Monster Butler after committing crimes while working in service to members of the British aristocracy. At the time of his death he was the oldest person serving a whole life tariff in prison.

Robert Christian Hansen, known in the media as the "Butcher Baker," was an American serial killer. Between 1971 and 1983, Hansen abducted, raped, and murdered at least 17 women in and around Anchorage, Alaska; he hunted many of them down in the wilderness with a Ruger Mini-14 and a knife. He was arrested and convicted in 1983, and was sentenced to 461 years and a life sentence without the possibility of parole.

William George Heirens was an American convicted of murder who confessed to three murders in 1946. Heirens was called the Lipstick Killer after a notorious message scrawled in lipstick at a crime scene. At the time of his death, Heirens was reputedly Chicago's longest-serving prisoner, having spent 65 years in prison.

Leslie "Joe Goebbels" Irvin was an American serial killer whose killing spree in the early 1950s terrorized residents of southwestern Indiana and whose Supreme Court case set a precedent for ensuring a fair trial for defendants even in the wake of a great deal of pretrial publicity.

Charles Jackson, Jr., known as The East Bay Slayer, was an American serial killer, responsible for the murders of at least 7 women and one man between 1975 and 1982. All crimes were committed in Contra Costa County, in the San Francisco Bay Area. His exposure occurred only a few years after his death, based on results from DNA profiling. Jackson is suspected of committing several more murders during the 1970s and 1980s around the Contra Costa area, in which at least 5 other serial killers also operated in that time frame.

Wilbur Lee Jennings, known as The Ditchbank Murderer, is an American serial killer who killed at least six girls and women in Fresno and Sacramento, California between 1981 and 1984. On November 20, 1986, he was sentenced to death, but died in custody before he could be executed.

Marie-Thérèse Joniaux (née Maria Teresa Joséphe Ablaÿ; October 15, 1844 - 1923) was a Belgian poisoner who made headlines in 1894–1895 as part of the Joniaux Affair after the triple poisoning perpetrated against her sister, Léonie Ablaÿ, her uncle-by-marriage, Jacques Van de Kerkhove and her brother, Alfred Ablaÿ. She was sentenced to death on February 3, 1895. Her death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment, and she died in Antwerp in 1923.

Oleg Vladimirovich Kuznetsov was a Soviet-Russian serial killer and rapist. Between 1991 and 1992, he killed 10 girls and women between the ages of 15 and 30.

Émile Louis was a French bus driver and the prime suspect in the disappearance of seven young women in the département of Yonne, Burgundy, in the late 1970s. In 2000 Louis confessed to their murders; he retracted this confession one month later.

John Ingvar Lövgren, later renamed John Ingvar Andersson was a Swedish serial killer and rapist who confessed to four murders committed between 1958 and 1963 in the Stockholm region. Lövgren was convicted and sentenced to closed psychiatric treatment at Salberga prison. He went under the name Flickmördaren, because his last two victims were young girls. He was, at the time of his death in 2002, no longer in treatment due to poor health, which he had received from his cancer. He was buried at Sala cemetery.

Eddie Lee Mosley was an American serial killer and rapist who murdered at least 8 women in Fort Lauderdale, Florida between 1973 and 1987. He was arrested in 2001 following the results of a DNA profiling test, after being the prime suspect in several murders for many years. Before his arrest, two other men were wrongly convicted of several murders later attributed to Mosley: Frank Lee Smith, who spent 15 years in prison and died behind bars before he could be exonerated, and Jerry Townsend, who spend 22 years in prison before being released. Mosley's true victim count is unknown, with authorities speculating that he committed at least 16 murders and dozens of rapes.

Donald Neilson, alias the "Black Panther", was a British armed robber, kidnapper and murderer. He murdered three men during robberies of sub-post offices between 1971 and 1974, and murdered kidnap victim Lesley Whittle, an heiress from Highley, Shropshire, in January 1975. He was apprehended later that year, and sentenced to life imprisonment in July 1976, remaining in prison until his death in 2011.

Anatoly Yuryovych Onoprienko was a Soviet-Ukrainian serial mass murderer. He was also known by the nicknames The Beast of Ukraine, The Terminator, and Citizen O. After police arrested the 36-year-old former forestry student on April 16, 1996, Onoprienko confessed to killing 52 people.

Félix-Albert Pel (born June 12, 1849 in Aigueblanche, Savoie Department - June 9, 1924 in the prison of New Caledonia) was a French criminal and serial killer. He was nicknamed the "Watchmaker of Montreuil".

Ernesto Picchioni, nicknamed "The Monster of Nerola" was an Italian serial killer and criminal, responsible for 4 to 16 homicides committed in the town of Nerola.

Dorothea Helen Puente was an American convicted serial killer. In the 1980s, Puente ran a boarding house in Sacramento, California and murdered various elderly and mentally disabled boarders before cashing their Social Security checks. Her total count reached nine confirmed murders, and six unconfirmed. Newspapers dubbed Puente the "Death House Landlady".

Ricardo Leyva Muñoz Ramírez, known as Richard Ramirez, was an American serial killer, serial rapist, and burglar. His highly publicized home invasion crime spree terrorized the residents of the greater Los Angeles area and later the residents of the San Francisco area from June 1984 until August 1985. Prior to his capture, Ramirez was dubbed the "Night Stalker" by the news media.

Terrence Peder Rasmussen was an American serial killer. Rasmussen killed at least six people in a crime spree that spanned decades and stretched across the continental United States. Due to his use of many aliases, most notably "Bob Evans", Rasmussen is known as "The Chameleon Killer".

Melvin David Rees was an American serial killer who committed five murders in Virginia and Maryland between 1957 and 1959. He murdered and sexually assaulted Margaret Harold, the girlfriend of US Army soldier Sgt. Roy D. Hudson, during a highway encounter near Annapolis. Two years later, he murdered the four members of the Jackson family near Fredericksburg, Virginia. After his conviction for the killings, Rees confessed to two other murders, and authorities believed he was involved in two more.

Gioanni-Luigi Richetto was an Italian serial killer who murdered and dismembered four people in Lyon, France between 1893 and 1899. He was arrested on January 9, 1900 and sentenced to life imprisonment in 1901; he was sent to serve his sentence at the Salvation Islands in French Guiana, where he died a few months later.

Manuel Blanco Romasanta was Spain's first recorded serial killer. In 1853, he admitted to thirteen murders, but claimed he was not responsible because he was suffering from a curse that caused him to turn into a wolf. Although this defense was rejected at trial, Queen Isabella II commuted his death sentence to allow doctors to investigate the claim as an example of clinical lycanthropy. Romasanta has become part of Spanish folklore as the Werewolf of Allariz and is also known as The Tallow Man, a nickname he earned for rendering his victims' fat to make high-quality soap.

Sergei Vasilyevich Ryakhovsky was a Soviet-Russian serial killer, convicted for the killing of 18 people in the Moscow area between 1988 and 1993.

Darya Nikolayevna Saltykova, commonly known as Saltychikha, was a Russian noblewoman, sadist, and serial killer from Moscow, who became notorious for torturing and killing most of her serfs, mostly females. Saltykova has been compared to the earlier Hungarian "Blood Countess", Elizabeth Báthory, who committed similar crimes in her home, Čachtice Castle, against servant girls and local serfs.

Arthur John Shawcross, also known as the Genesee River Killer, was an American serial killer active in Rochester, New York.

Lydia Sherman, née Danbury, also known as The Derby Poisoner, was an American serial killer. She poisoned eight children in her care and her three husbands and was convicted of second-degree murder in 1872. Five years into her sentence, she escaped under the pretext of being sick and got a job as housekeeper to a rich widower in Providence. She was caught and imprisoned again before dying in Wethersfield State Prison on May 16, 1878 from cancer.

Robert Yale Shulman was an American serial killer. Shulman, a postal worker from Hicksville, New York on Long Island, was convicted of murdering five prostitutes between 1991 and 1996, the year when he was arrested.

Daniel Lee Siebert was an American serial killer on Alabama's death row. He was convicted of three murders and confessed to at least five. During questioning he indicated that he was responsible for at least 12 deaths. Siebert died on April 22, 2008 in Holman Prison near Atmore of complications from cancer.

Maria Catherina van der Linden-Swanenburg was a Dutch serial killer who murdered at least 27 people and was suspected of killing more than 90 people.

Serhiy Fedorovich Tkach was a Soviet and later Ukrainian serial killer, convicted for the killing of 37 women and girls in Ukraine and Soviet Union from 1980 to 2005.

Ottis Elwood Toole was an American drifter and serial killer who was convicted of six counts of murder. Like his companion Henry Lee Lucas, Toole made confessions he then later recanted, which resulted in murder convictions. The discrediting of the case against Lucas for crimes for which Toole had offered corroborating statements created doubts as to whether either was a genuine serial killer or, as Hugh Aynesworth suggested, both were merely compliant interviewees whom police used to clear unsolved murders from the books.

Carl Eugene Watts, also known by his nickname Coral, was an American serial killer dubbed "The Sunday Morning Slasher". He died of prostate cancer while serving two sentences of life imprisonment without parole in a Michigan prison for the murders of Helen Dutcher and Gloria Steele, although the number of his victims may have exceeded 80.

Robert Zarinsky was a convicted murderer and suspected serial killer from Linden, New Jersey.