Top 20 Famous British Serial Killers

We take a look at some of Britain's most notorious serial killers, some of whom will be in prison until they die, with no chance of parole.

This is a list of notable serial killers from the UK, ranked by number of proven victims (deadliest):

#	Name:	Number of victims:
20.	Sweeney Todd	Unknown
19.	John Bodkin Adams	0 - 163+
18.	Beverley Allitt	4
17.	Colin Ireland	5 - 5+
16.	Ian Brady and Myra Hindley	5 - 5+
15.	Jack the Ripper	5 - 11+
14.	Margaret Waters	5 - 19+
13.	Steven Wright	5 - 22+
12.	John George Haigh	6 - 9+
11.	Amelia Dyer	6 - 400+
10.	John Williams	7
9.	Peter Manuel	7 - 9+
8.	Kenneth Erskine	7 - 11+
7.	John Christie	8 - 8+
6.	Dennis Nilsen	12 - 16+
5.	Fred West and Rosemary West	12 - 20+
4.	Peter Sutcliffe	13 - 15+
3.	Mary Ann Cotton	14 - 21+
2.	William Burke and William Hare	16 - 16+
1.	Harold Shipman	218 - 250+

(See also Top 20 British Female Serial Killers)
(See also Britain's 35 serial killers... who will die behind bars)

(See also 7 Myths About Serial Killers)
(See also The Last Words of 30 Famous Serial Killers)
(See also Top 30 Serial Killers By Number of Victims (20th century))
(See also Top 30 Intelligent Serial Killers With Highest IQ)

20. Sweeney Todd (Unknown)

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(Tod Slaughter as Sweeney Todd, 1936 film)

Sweeney Todd is a fictional character who first appeared as the main protagonist of the Victorian penny dreadful The String of Pearls (1846–47).

Alias:  The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, Benjamin Barker
Gender:  Male
Occupation:  Barber, Serial killer
Spouse(s):  None in original version, Lucy Barker (musical version)
Number of victims:  Unknown
Location:  United Kingdom

The tale became a staple of Victorian melodrama and London urban legend, and has been retold many times since, most notably in the Tony award-winning Broadway musical by Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler.

Claims that Sweeney Todd was a historical person are strongly disputed by scholars, although possible legendary prototypes exist.

19. John Bodkin Adams (0 - 163+)

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(John Bodkin Adams)

Acquitted in a highly unusual trial in 1957 of murder but later found guilty of fraud. Archive evidence shows that he was almost certainly a killer but that his prosecution was botched for political reasons.

Alias:  Doctor Death
Classification:  Serial killer ?
Characteristics:  Poisoner ? - General practitioner  beneficiary of 132 patients' wills
Number of victims:  0 - 163 +
Date of murders:  1935 - 1956
Date of arrest:  December 19, 1956
Date of birth:  January 21, 1899
Victims profile:  Elderly women (patients)
Method of murder:  Poisoning
Location:  Eastbourne, East Sussex, England, United Kingdom
Status:  Acquitted of murder on April 15, 1957. Died on July 4, 1983

John Bodkin Adams (21 January 1899 – 4 July 1983) was an Irish general practitioner, convicted fraudster and suspected serial killer. Between 1946 and 1956, more than 160 of his patients died in suspicious circumstances. Of these, 132 left him money or items in their wills. He was tried and acquitted for the murder of one patient in 1957. Another count of murder was withdrawn by the prosecution in what was later described as "an abuse of process" by the presiding judge Patrick Devlin, causing questions to be asked in parliament about the prosecution's handling of events. The trial was featured in headlines around the world and was described at the time as "one of the greatest murder trials of all time" and "murder trial of the century". It was also described at the time as "unique" because, in the words of the judge, "the act of murder" had "to be proved by expert evidence."

The trial had several important legal ramifications. It established the doctrine of double effect, whereby a doctor giving treatment with the aim of relieving pain may, as an unintentional result, shorten life. Secondly, because of the publicity surrounding Adams's committal hearing, the law was changed to allow defendants to ask for such hearings to be held in private. Finally, though a defendant had never been required to give evidence in his own defence, the judge underlined in his summing-up that no prejudice should be attached by the jury to Adams not doing so.

The case, and the inability to convict Adams of murder, is also known for widely suspected political interference from Sir Roland Gwynne, ex-Attorney-General Hartley Shawcross, and various members of the Harold Macmillan government.

Adams was found guilty in a subsequent trial of 13 offences of prescription fraud, lying on cremation forms, obstructing a police search and failing to keep a dangerous drugs register. He was removed from the Medical Register in 1957 and reinstated in 1961 after two failed applications.

Scotland Yard's files on the case were initially closed to the public for 75 years, which would be until 2033. However, special permission was granted in 2003 to reopen the files.

18. Beverley Allitt (4)

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(Beverley Allitt)

A nurse, Allitt attacked 11 children in her care during a period of 59 days, killing four of them. Some of the victims were overdosed with insulin, others were injected with air bubbles. Imprisoned for life since 1993.

Alias:  Angel of Death
Characteristics:  Nurse suffering from the mental illness Munchausen's Syndrome by Proxy
Number of victims:  4
Date of birth:  October 4, 1968
Date of murders:  February-April 1991
Date of arrest:  November 1991
Victims profile:  Liam Taylor, 7-months-old / Timothy Hardwick, 11-years-old / Becky Phillips, 2-months-old / Claire Peck, 15-months-old
Method of murder:  Poisoning (insulin - lignocaine)
Location:  Lincolnshire, England, United Kingdom
Status:  Sentenced to 13 concurrent terms of life imprisonment on May 28, 1993

Beverley Gail Allitt (born 4 October 1968) is an English serial killer who was convicted of murdering four children, attempting to murder three other children, and causing grievous bodily harm to a further six children. The crimes were committed over a period of 59 days between February and April 1991 in the children's ward at Grantham and Kesteven Hospital, Lincolnshire, where Allitt was employed as a State Enrolled Nurse. She administered large doses of insulin to at least two victims and a large air bubble was found in the body of another, but police were unable to establish how all the attacks were carried out. In May 1993, at Nottingham Crown Court, she received 13 life sentences for the crimes. Mr. Justice Latham, sentencing, told Allitt that she was "a serious danger" to others and was unlikely ever to be considered safe enough to be released. She is detained at Rampton Secure Hospital in Nottinghamshire.

17. Colin Ireland (5 - 5+)

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(Colin Ireland)

Colin Ireland (16 March 1954 – 21 February 2012) was a British serial killer known as the Gay Slayer because his victims were homosexual men.

Born:  16 March 1954, Dartford, Kent, England
Died:  21 February 2012 (aged 57), HM Prison Wakefield, West Yorkshire, England
Cause of death:  Pulmonary fibrosis
Alias:  The Gay Slayer
Criminal penalty:  Five counts of life imprisonment
Proven victims:  5
Possible victims:  5+
Span of killings:  8 March 1993–12 June 1993
Location:  United Kingdom
Date apprehended:  21 July 1993

Ireland suffered a severely dysfunctional upbringing. He committed various crimes from age 16 and had served time in borstals and prisons. Criminologist David Wilson stated that Ireland was a psychopath.

While living in Southend, he started frequenting the Coleherne pub, a gay pub in west London. It was known as a place where men cruised for sexual partners and wore colour-coded handkerchiefs that indicated their preferred role. Ireland sought men who liked the passive role and sadomasochism, so he could readily restrain them as they initially believed it was a sexual game.

Ireland said he was heterosexual – he had been married twice – and that he pretended to be gay only to befriend potential victims. Ireland claimed that his motives were not sexually motivated. He was highly organised, and carried a full murder kit of rope and handcuffs and a full change of clothes to each murder. After killing his victim he cleaned the flat of any forensic evidence linking him to the scene and stayed in the flat until morning in order to avoid arousing suspicion from leaving in the middle of the night.

He was jailed for life for the murders in December 1993 and remained imprisoned until his death in February 2012, at the age of 57.

16. Ian Brady and Myra Hindley (5 - 5+)

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(Ian Brady (left) and Myra Hindley (right), October 1965)

The "Moors murderers" abused and murdered five children in the 1960s. The lovers, who buried the bodies on the moors near Manchester, were jailed for life in 1966. Hindley, her face immortalised in a police mug shot, died in 2002. Brady, now 71, is still being held at high-security Ashworth Hospital, Merseyside, where he has been on hunger strike for most of the past 10 years.

Born:  Brady:  2 January 1938 (age 77), Hindley: 23 July 1942
Died:  Hindley: 15 November 2002 (aged 60)
Cause of death:  Bronchial pneumonia caused by heart disease
Alias:  The Moors murderers
Criminal penalty:  Life imprisonment
Conviction(s):  Murder
Proven victims:  5
Possible victims:  5+
Span of killings:  12 July 1963 – 6 October 1965
Location:  United Kingdom
Date apprehended:  Brady: 7 October 1965, Hindley: 11 October 1965

The Moors murders were carried out by Ian Brady and Myra Hindley between July 1963 and October 1965, in and around what is now Greater Manchester, England. The victims were five children aged between 10 and 17—Pauline Reade, John Kilbride, Keith Bennett, Lesley Ann Downey and Edward Evans—at least four of whom were sexually assaulted. The murders are so named because two of the victims were discovered in graves dug on Saddleworth Moor; a third grave was discovered on the moor in 1987, more than 20 years after Brady and Hindley's trial in 1966. The body of a fourth victim, Keith Bennett, is also suspected to be buried there, but despite repeated searches it remains undiscovered.

The police were initially aware of only three killings, those of Edward Evans, Lesley Ann Downey and John Kilbride. The investigation was reopened in 1985, after Brady was reported in the press as having confessed to the murders of Pauline Reade and Keith Bennett. Brady and Hindley were taken separately to Saddleworth Moor to assist the police in their search for the graves, both by then having confessed to the additional murders.

Characterised by the press as "the most evil woman in Britain", Hindley made several appeals against her life sentence, claiming she was a reformed woman and no longer a danger to society, but she was never released. She died in 2002, aged 60. Brady was declared criminally insane in 1985, since when he has been confined in the high-security Ashworth Hospital. He has made it clear that he never wants to be released, and has repeatedly asked that he be allowed to die.

The murders, reported in almost every English-language newspaper in the world, were the result of what Malcolm MacCulloch, professor of forensic psychiatry at Cardiff University, called a "concatenation of circumstances". The trial judge, Mr Justice Atkinson, described Brady and Hindley in his closing remarks as "two sadistic killers of the utmost depravity".

15. Jack the Ripper (5 - 11+)

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(Jack the Ripper)

Unidentified serial killer who stabbed at least five prostitutes and mutilated four in the Whitechapel district of London. Nobody was ever brought to justice for the crimes which are still considered one of Britain's most infamous unsolved murder cases.

Alias:  "The Whitechapel Murderer", "Leather Apron"
Number of victims:  Unknown (5 canonical)
Possible victims:  11+
Span of killings:  1888–91?, (1888 5 canonical)
Location:  United Kingdom

Jack the Ripper is the best known name given to an unidentified serial killer or killers active in the largely impoverished areas in and around the Whitechapel district of London in 1888. The name originated in a letter written by someone claiming to be the murderer that was widely disseminated in the media. The letter is widely believed to have been a hoax, and may have been written by journalists in an attempt to heighten interest in the story and increase their newspaper's circulation. Within the crime case files as well as contemporaneous journalistic accounts the killer was called "the Whitechapel Murderer" as well as "Leather Apron".

Attacks ascribed to Jack the Ripper typically involved female prostitutes who lived and worked in the slums of London and whose throats were cut prior to abdominal mutilations. The removal of internal organs from at least three of the victims led to proposals that their killer possessed anatomical or surgical knowledge. Rumours that the murders were connected intensified in September and October 1888, and letters from a writer or writers purporting to be the murderer were received by media outlets and Scotland Yard. The "From Hell" letter, received by George Lusk of the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee, included half of a preserved human kidney, purportedly taken from one of the victims. Mainly because of the extraordinarily brutal character of the murders, and because of media treatment of the events, the public came increasingly to believe in a single serial killer known as "Jack the Ripper".

(The signature from the Dear Boss Letter - Jack the Ripper.)

Extensive newspaper coverage bestowed widespread and enduring international notoriety on the Ripper, and his legend solidified. A police investigation into a series of eleven brutal killings in Whitechapel up to 1891 was unable to connect all the killings conclusively to the murders of 1888. Five victims: Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes and Mary Jane Kelly, all murdered between 31 August and 9 November 1888, are known as the "canonical five" and their murders are often considered the most likely to be linked. As the murders were never solved, the legends surrounding them became a combination of genuine historical research, folklore, and pseudohistory. The term "ripperology" was coined to describe the study and analysis of the Ripper cases. There are now over one hundred theories about the Ripper's identity, and the murders have inspired multiple works of fiction.

14. Margaret Waters (5 - 19+)

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(The Execution of Margaret Waters)

Margaret Waters was an English murderess hanged by executioner William Calcraft on 11 October 1870 at Horsemonger Lane Gaol (also known as Surrey County Gaol) in London.

Waters was born in 1835 and lived in Brixton. She was known for baby-farming, that is, taking in other women's children for money; a practice often resulting in infanticide.

Waters drugged and starved the infants in her care and is believed to have killed at least 19 children. Charged with five counts of wilful murder as well as neglect and conspiracy, Waters was convicted of murdering an infant named John Walter Cowen. Her sister, Sarah Ellis, was convicted in the same case for obtaining money under false pretences and sentenced to eighteen months' hard labour.

Alias:  The Brixton Baby Farmer
Classification:  Murderer
Characteristics:  The first convicted baby farmer
Proven victims:  5
Possible victims:  19+
Date of murder:  1866 - 1870
Date of birth:  1835
Victims profile:  Infants in her care
Method of murder:  Drugged the babies with opiates, which suppressed their appetites leaving them to slowly starve
Location:  Brixton, London, England, United Kingdom
Status:  Executed by hanging at Horsemonger Lane Gaol on October 11, 1870

Margaret Waters (The Brixton Baby Farmer), born in 1835, was the first convicted baby farmer to be hanged in England by William Calcraft at Surrey Country Goal on October 11th 1870.

Margaret turned to baby farming in 1864 after the death of her husband to make ends meet.

She started advertising in The Clerkenwell News for babies to ‘adopt’ for the sum of £10 supposedly passing them on to foster homes, who also advertised for babies to adopt for a fee in the local papers. Margaret would then pocket the difference.

She soon found it more profitable to dispose of the babies in her care.

It was far easier to drug the babies with opiates, which suppressed their appetites leaving them to slowly starve.

Five babies were to die in her care of diarrhoea, wasting and convulsions.

However, Margaret is suspected of murdering up to 19 infants.

Margaret would then wrap their frail bodies in brown paper before dumping them on the streets - a common sight in Victorian Britain due to the high cost of burial.

Eventually, Margaret was arrested and tried for the wilful murder of John Walter Cowen, the illegitimate son of 16-year-old Janet Tassie Cowen.

The arresting police officer wrote of his findings at Margaret’s house: “Some half-dozen little infants lay together on a sofa, filthy, starving, and stupefied by laudanum.”

Margaret Waters may have been the first to hang for baby farming, but she certainly wasn’t the last. Rhoda Willis, or as she was known, tried and convicted as, Leslie James, has that honour.

13. Steven Wright (5 - 22+)

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(Steven Wright)

Steven Gerald James Wright (born 24 April 1958) is an English serial killer, also known as The Suffolk Strangler. He is currently serving life imprisonment for the murder of five women who worked as prostitutes in Ipswich, Suffolk. The killings took place during late 2006 and Wright was found guilty in February 2008.

Born:  24 April 1958 (age 56), Erpingham, Norfolk, England
Alias:  The Suffolk Strangler
Criminal penalty:  Life imprisonment, with recommendation of a whole life tariff
Proven victims:  5
Possible victims:  22+
Span of killings:  30 October 2006 - 9 December 2006
Location:  United Kingdom
Date apprehended:  19 December 2006

Between 30 October and 10 December 2006, Wright murdered five prostitutes in Ipswich. Forensic evidence led to his arrest on 19 December. At the time of the murders Wright was working as a forklift truck driver. He was found guilty of all five murders on 21 February 2008. On the following day, he was sentenced to life imprisonment and the judge recommended that he should never be released.

It was announced on 19 March 2008 that Wright would be appealing against his convictions. However, on 2 February 2009, it was announced that Wright had decided to drop this appeal case.

Wright is still being investigated in connection with other unsolved murders and disappearances.

12. John George Haigh (6 - 9+)

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(John George Haigh)

Called the "Acid Bath Murderer" for dissolving his victims in sulphuric acid under the belief that he could not be prosecuted for murder if no body was found. He would then forge papers to sell the victims possessions. Confessed nine murders, convicted of six and hanged.

Born:  24 July 1909, Stamford, Lincolnshire, England, UK
Died:  10 August 1949 (aged 40), Wandsworth Prison, Wandsworth, England, UK
Cause of death:  Execution by hanging
Alias:  The Acid Bath Murderer
Criminal penalty:  Execution
Proven victims:  6
Possible victims:  9+
Span of killings:  1944–1949
Location:  United Kingdom
Date apprehended:  1949

John George Haigh (24 July 1909 – 10 August 1949), commonly known as the "Acid Bath Murderer", was an English serial killer during the 1940s. He was convicted of the murders of six people, although he claimed to have killed nine. He used acid not to kill his victims but in what he believed to be a foolproof method of body disposal: he would dissolve their bodies in concentrated sulphuric acid before forging papers to be able to sell their possessions and collect substantial sums of money. During the investigation, it became apparent that Haigh was using the acid to destroy victims' bodies because he misunderstood the meaning of the term corpus delicti, thinking that, if victims' bodies could not be found, a murder conviction would not be possible. The substantial forensic evidence, notwithstanding the absence of his victims' bodies, was sufficient for him to be convicted for the murders and subsequently executed.

11. Amelia Dyer (6 - 400+)

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(Amelia Dyer)

Amelia Elizabeth Dyer (née Hobley; 1837 – 10 June 1896) was one of the most prolific serial-killers in history, murdering infants in her care over a 20 year period in Victorian England. She was tried and hanged for one murder, but there is little doubt she was responsible for many more similar deaths—possibly 400 or more.

Alias:  The Reading Baby Farmer
Classification:  Serial killer
Characteristics:  The most prolific baby farm murderer of Victorian England
Proven victims:  6
Possible victims:  400+
Date of murder:  1880 - 1896
Date of arrest:  April 4, 1896
Date of birth:  1839
Victim profile:  Children ("adopted" illegitimate infants for lump-sum payments)
Method of murder:  Strangulation
Location:  Reading, Berkshire, England, United Kingdom
Status:  Executed by hanging at Newgate Prison on June 10, 1896

Amelia Elizabeth Dyer was a 'baby farmer'. Someone who, for a fee, would look after children, usually illegitimate, until a home could be found for them. Born in 1829 and raised in Bristol to respectable parents and trained as a nurse before deciding that 'adopting' illegitimate infants was a more lucrative career. 

In 1879 she was sentenced to six months' hard labour after being found guilty on a charge of neglect. A doctor had become suspicious of the number of infants who had died while in Mrs Dyer's care and had reported the matter to the authorities. On her release she spent several periods in mental institutions before resuming her child-care activities. 

In 1895 she moved to Kensington Road, Reading and began advertising. It was not long before small bodies were being fished out of the Thames. One of the bodies recovered had a tape around its neck and was wrapped in a parcel. The paper enclosing the corpse had an address on it and this was traced to Mrs Dyer. The tiny corpse was identified as Helena Fry.

Dyer was eventually arrested on 4th April 1896. By May, seven tiny bodies had been recovered from the Thames, all had the tape around their necks and all were parcelled. Three of the bodies were identified as four-month-old Doris Marmon, thirteen-month-old Harry Simmonds and the daughter of Elizabeth Goulding. The others were to remain unidentified. She soon confessed, saying "You'll know all mine by the tape around their necks." While in Reading police station she made two attempts to commit suicide.

She came to trial at the Old Bailey in May 1896 charged with just the murder of Doris Marmon, to which she pleaded guilty. The defence tried to prove insanity but failed, despite her dubious mental history. The jury took five minutes to find Dyer guilty and she was sentenced to death. James Billington hanged her at Newgate on 10th June 1896. Police suspected that at least 20 other children had disappeared in a similar manner in the few months before her arrest.

10. John Williams (7)

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(John Williams)

Irish sailor who murdered two families and their servants in London's East End by bashing their heads with a hammer and cutting their throats. Hanged himself in prison while awaiting trial.

Date of birth:  1784
Date of murders:  December 7/19, 1811
Number of victims:  7
Location:  London, England, United Kingdom
Alias:  John Murphy
Outcome:  Declared guilty after committing suicide in his prison cell, December 28, 1811
Deaths:  Timothy Marr, Celia Marr, Timothy Marr (3 mos.), James Gowan, John Williamson, Elizabeth Williamson, Bridget Anna Harrington

The Ratcliff Highway murders (sometimes Ratcliffe Highway murders) were two vicious attacks on two separate families that resulted in seven fatalities. The two attacks occurred within twelve days in December 1811, in homes half a mile apart near Wapping in London.

A principal suspect in the murders, John Williams (also known as Murphy), was a lodger at the nearby Pear Tree public house in Old Wapping. He was a 27-year-old Scottish or Irish seaman. He had nursed a grievance against Marr from when they were shipmates, but the subsequent murders at the Kings Arms remain unexplained.

Williams was arrested, but committed suicide by hanging himself, in Coldbath Fields Prison. His corpse was dragged through the streets, in a cart, that paused by the scene of the murders. His body was pitched into a hole and was buried, with a stake through its heart, at the junction of Commercial Road and Cannon Street Road. In August 1886, the skeleton of John Williams (with a stake driven through it) was discovered during the excavation of a trench by a gas company. It was six feet below the surface of the road where Cannon Street and Cable Street cross at St George in the East. The landlord of the  Crown and Dolphin public house, at the corner of Cannon Street Road, retained the skull as a souvenir.

The thriving cheap newspapers spread the news round the country, as the gruesome details of the violence leaked out over the days after the two incidents. This became one of the first national shock stories to circulate in Britain. Speculation on who killed the innocent families, and why, kept the story alive right through to the burial of the eventually accused man.

Recent reviews of the evidence suggest he was not the murderer.

9. Peter Manuel (7 - 9+)

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(Peter Manuel)

Peter Thomas Anthony Manuel (13 March 1927 – 11 July 1958) was an American-born Scottish serial killer who was convicted of murdering seven people across Lanarkshire and southern Scotland between 1956 and his arrest in January 1958, and is believed to have murdered two more. Prior to his arrest, the media nicknamed the unidentified killer "the Beast of Birkenshaw". Manuel was hanged at Glasgow's Barlinnie Prison; he was one of the last prisoners to die on the Barlinnie gallows.

Born:  13 March 1927, New York City, United States
Died:  11 July 1958 (aged 31), HM Prison Barlinnie, Glasgow, Scotland, United Kingdom
Cause of death:  Hanging
Alias:  The Beast of Birkenshaw
Height:  5 ft 4 in (163 cm)
Criminal penalty:  Death
Proven victims:  7
Possible victims:  9+
Span of killings:  2 January 1956 - 1 January 1958
Location:  England/Scotland, United Kingdom
Date apprehended:  13 January 1958

Manuel was tried in 1958 for the murders of eight people. One case against him was thrown out of court; another, committed in England, was attributed to him.

Although many police officers who were familiar with Manuel suspected him of carrying out these murders, they were unable to prove it until shortly after the Smarts’ murder, when some banknotes Manuel had been using to pay for drinks in east-end Glasgow pubs were found to be from the batch stolen from their household by the killer. After the police arrested his father, he confessed to eight of these murders (but not Sydney Dunn) and provided incriminating information.

On 11 July 1958, Manuel was hanged on the gallows at Barlinnie Prison by Harry Allen. His last words are reported to have been, "Turn up the radio and I’ll go quietly".

Around the time of his trial and execution, some newspapers published claims that Manuel was responsible for several other unsolved murders from the 1950s, but the evidence for this is tenuous at best, and in some cases it can be shown that he was in prison at the time.

Contrary to what is sometimes believed, Manuel was not the last criminal to be executed in Scotland, but the third-last. Anthony Miller followed Manuel on to the Barlinnie gallows in December 1960, while Henry John Burnett suffered a similar fate at Craiginches Prison, Aberdeen in August 1963.

In 2009, a BBC programme Inside the Mind of a Psychopath argued that the authorities colluded to ensure Manuel was hanged, despite the fact that he was a known psychopath.

Scottish actor Brian Cox based his portrayal of Hannibal Lecter in Manhunter on Manuel.

8. Kenneth Erskine (7 - 11+)

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(Kenneth Erskine)

Kenneth Erskine (born July 1963) is a British serial killer who became known as the Stockwell Strangler.

Born:  July 1963 (age 51), Hammersmith, London, England
Alias:  The Stockwell Strangler
Criminal penalty:  Life imprisonment
Proven victims:  7
Possible victims:  11+
Location:  Stockwell, London, England, United Kingdom
Span of killings:  9 April - 28 July 1986
Date apprehended:  28 July 1986

The Court of Appeal has ruled that Kenneth Erskine's convictions for murdering seven pensioners should be replaced with manslaughter due to diminished responsibility.

Erskine was schizophrenic and had a mental age of 11.

His trial opened at the Old Bailey on 12 January 1988. Erskine faced seven counts of murder and one of attempted murder. He pleaded not guilty but the jury did not believe him and he was found guilty on all eight counts. Erskine was given seven life sentences for the murders and twelve years’ imprisonment for the attempted murder. The judge recommended that he should serve a minimum of 40 years, the longest period of detention ever recommended.

In February 1996, Erskine prevented an attack on Peter Sutcliffe, the “Yorkshire Ripper”, by raising the alarm as a fellow inmate, Paul Wilson, attempted to strangle him with the flex from a pair of stereo headphones.

In July 2009 he won an appeal to have his conviction amended to manslaughter due to diminished responsibility (he is judged to have been severely schizophrenic at the time he was murdering pensioners).

7. John Christie (8 - 8+)

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(John Christie)

John Reginald Halliday Christie (8 April 1899 – 15 July 1953) was a notorious English serial killer active during the 1940s and early 1950s. He murdered at least eight women – including his wife Ethel – by strangling them in his apartment at 10 Rillington Place, Notting Hill, London.

Born:  8 April 1899, Northowram, Halifax, West Riding of Yorkshire, England
Died:  15 July 1953 (aged 54), Pentonville Prison, London, England
Cause of death:  Execution by hanging
Alias:  The Rillington Place Strangler
Criminal penalty:  Death sentence
Proven victims:  8
Possible victims:  8+
Span of killings:  August 1943 – 6 March 1953
Location:  United Kingdom
Date apprehended:  31 March 1953

Christie relocated out of Rillington Place during March 1953, and soon afterward the bodies of three of his victims were discovered hidden in an alcove in the kitchen. His wife's body was found beneath the floorboards of the front room. Christie was arrested and convicted of his wife's murder, for which he was hanged.

Christie was born in Northowram near Halifax, West Riding of Yorkshire. While serving as an infantryman during World War I, he was apparently injured by a gas attack, which he claimed left him permanently unable to speak loudly. He turned to crime following his discharge from the army and was imprisoned several times, for offences including theft and assault. On the outbreak of World War II during 1939, he was accepted for service with the War Reserve Police, when the authorities failed to check his criminal record. He committed his murders between 1943 and 1953, usually by strangling his victims after he had rendered them unconscious with domestic gas; some, he raped as they lay unconscious.

Two of Christie's victims were Beryl Evans and her daughter Geraldine, who, along with Beryl's husband Timothy, were tenants at 10 Rillington Place during 1948-49. This case sparked huge controversy after Timothy Evans was charged with both murders, found guilty of the murder of his daughter, and hanged in 1950. Christie was a major prosecution witness; but, when his own crimes were discovered three years later, serious doubts were raised about the integrity of Evans's conviction. Christie himself subsequently admitted killing Beryl Evans, but not Geraldine. It is now generally accepted that Christie murdered both Beryl and Geraldine and that police mishandling of the original enquiry, as well as their incompetence in searches at the house, allowed Christie to escape detection and enabled him to murder four more women. The High Court, when dismissing an appeal in the Evans case during the 2000s, accepted that Evans did not murder either his wife or his child, so a miscarriage of justice occurred when Timothy Evans was hanged.

In an official inquiry conducted in 1965–66, Mr Justice (Sir Daniel) Brabin concluded that it was "more probable than not" that Evans killed his wife but that he did not kill his daughter Geraldine. This finding, challenged in subsequent legal processes, enabled the Home Secretary to grant Evans a posthumous pardon for the murder of his daughter during October 1966. The case contributed to the suspension of capital punishment for Murder in the United Kingdom during 1965. Christie's story was dramatised in the 1971 film 10 Rillington Place, in which he was portrayed by Richard Attenborough.

6. Dennis Nilsen (12 - 16+)

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(Dennis Nilsen)

Dennis Andrew Nilsen (born 23 November 1945) is a British serial killer, also known as the Muswell Hill Murderer and the Kindly Killer, who committed the murders of a minimum of 12 young men in a series of killings committed between 1978 and 1983 in London, England. Convicted of six counts of murder and two of attempted murder at the Old Bailey, Nilsen was sentenced to life imprisonment on 4 November 1983, with a recommendation that he serve a minimum of 25 years. He is currently incarcerated at HMP Full Sutton maximum security prison in the East Riding of Yorkshire, England.

Born:  23 November 1945 (age 69), Fraserburgh, Aberdeenshire, Scotland, U.K.
Alias:  The Muswell Hill Murderer, The Kindly Killer
Criminal penalty:  Life imprisonment (whole life tariff)
Conviction(s):  Murder
Proven victims:  12
Possible victims:  16+
Span of killings:  30 December 1978 - 26 January 1983
Location:  United Kingdom
Date apprehended:  9 February 1983
Imprisoned at:  HMP Full Sutton

All of Nilsen's murders were committed in one of two North London addresses in which he alternately resided throughout the years he is known to have killed. His victims would be lured to these addresses through guile and all were murdered by strangulation, sometimes accompanied by drowning. Following the murder, Nilsen would observe a ritual in which he bathed and dressed the victims' bodies, which he would retain for extended periods of time, before dissecting and disposing of the remains via burning upon a bonfire, or flushing the remains down a lavatory.

Nilsen became known as the Muswell Hill Murderer as his later murders were committed in the Muswell Hill district of North London; he also became known as the Kindly Killer, in reference to his belief that his method of murder was the most humane. Owing to the similar modus operandi of the murderers, Nilsen has been described as the "British Jeffrey Dahmer".

5. Fred West and Rosemary West (12 - 20+)

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(Fred West (right) and Rosemary West (left))

The married couple from 25 Cromwell Street, Gloucester, abducted, tortured, raped and murdered women over 20 years. They buried many of their victims under the floorboards. The terrace house was later ripped down. Fred West committed suicide awaiting trial for 12 murders in January 1995. Rose was convicted of 10 murders, including that of her daughter, and sentenced to life. Now 56, she remains in prison.

Name:  Frederick Walter Stephen West, Rosemary Pauline West
Alias:  Fred (Frederick), Rose (Rosemary), Dozy Rosie (Rosemary)
Birth Date:  September 29, 1941 (Fred), November 29, 1953 (Rosemary)
Born:  Much Markle, Herefordshire, England, UK (Fred); Barnstaple, Devon, England, UK (Rosemary)
Date of Death:  January 1, 1995 (Fred)
Place of Death:  Birmingham, England (Fred)
Proven victims:  12
Possible victims:  20+
Status:  Deceased (Fred; suicide), Incarcerated (Rosemary)

In October of 1972, Fred and Rosemary hired a young woman named Caroline Owens to work for them as a nanny for their children. They kept making sexual advances on her, but she declined every time. One night in December, after they both unsuccesfully tried to seduce her, she tried to leave only to be held captive overnight. When Fred threatened to let some of his friends "have" her and that he would then kill her, she complied. The next day, she was released. Though she pressed charges, Fred was able to convince the court that the acts she was forced into had been consensual, so he and Rosemary were instead only fined £50 for indecent assault. Over the next six years, they killed at least eight young women who made their way to 25 Cromwell Street as lodgers or employees together. 

The Wests were finally exposed in May of 1992, when Fred videotaped himself raping one of his daughters. When she told her friends, one of them reported the Wests to the police. The investigating officer, Hazel Savage, had heard of Fred while he was in a relationship with Rena Costello. When another girl raped by Fred came forward, the police obtained a search warrant. In August, they searched the house for evidence of child abuse. Fred was arrested for rape and sodomy of a minor and Rose was arrested as an accomplice. While they were being processed, their younger children were placed in the care of the government. 

While Fred was in custody, Rosemary became depressed and even attempted suicide once, but was saved by one of her sons. Unfortunately, the rape case fell apart when the victims backed out. Meanwhile, Savage became increasingly suspicious of the Wests' past, the disappearance of Heather and the results of the interviews of the West children, especially that they had been threatened by Fred that they would be buried under the patio like Heather. She was able to obtain another search warrant to have the property dug up. The task was simplified when Fred confessed to Heather's murder in custody. When human bones started cropping up, Fred confessed to having committed the murders alone in order to protect Rosemary. However, he would not admit to raping any of his victims, saying they had wanted to have sex with him. Soon enough, the bodies of Anne McFall and Charmaine West turned up as well. Seeking to protect herself, Rose cut off all contact with her husband. On December 13, 1994, he was charged with a total 12 murders. On New Year's Day, he hanged himself in his cell at Winson Green Prison with a knotted bedsheet. His body was cremated and his funeral unattended except for five of his children. Rose was also put on trial in the end, first for rape but then for murder as well. She never confessed to any murders and the evidence against her was largely circumstantial. An important witness was Janet Leach, Fred's appropriate adult, who revealed that Fred had told her that Rose had been involved in the murders and even killed Charmaine West and Shirley Robinson on her own. On November 22, 1995, Rose was found guilty of 10 murders and sentenced to life. She will be never released. Though she maintains her innocence, she announced in 2001 that she will not try to appeal her conviction. In 1996, 25 Cromwell Street was completely demolished and the site turned into a pathway.

4. Peter Sutcliffe (13 - 15+)

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(Peter Sutcliffe)

Peter William Sutcliffe (born 2 June 1946) is a British serial killer who was dubbed "The Yorkshire Ripper" by the press. In 1981 Sutcliffe was convicted of murdering 13 women and attempting to murder seven others.

Born:  Peter William Sutcliffe, 2 June 1946 (age 68), Bingley, West Riding of Yorkshire, England, U.K.
Alias:  The Yorkshire Ripper, Peter William Coonan
Criminal penalty:  Life imprisonment (whole life order)
Proven victims:  13
Possible victims:  15+
Span of killings:  1975 - 1980
Location:  United Kingdom
Date apprehended:  2 January 1981

Sutcliffe had regularly used prostitutes in Leeds and Bradford. His outbreak of violence towards them seems to have occurred because he was swindled out of money by a prostitute and her pimp, but he later claimed to have been sent on a mission to kill prostitutes by the voice of God.

He carried out his murder spree over a five-year period, during which the public were especially shocked by the murders of some women who were not prostitutes. After his arrest in January 1981 for driving with false number-plates, police questioned him about the killings and he confessed that he was the perpetrator.

At his trial, he pleaded not guilty to murder on grounds of diminished responsibility, owing to a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia, but this defence was rejected by a majority of the jury. He is serving twenty concurrent sentences of life imprisonment, currently in Broadmoor High Security Hospital. After his conviction, Sutcliffe began using his mother's maiden name and became Peter William Coonan.

West Yorkshire Police were criticised for the time they took in apprehending Sutcliffe, despite interviewing him nine times during the murder hunt. Owing to the sensational nature of the case, they were having to handle an exceptional volume of information, some of it misleading, including a hoax recorded message and letters purporting to be from the "Ripper". Nevertheless, the 2006 Byford Report of the official enquiry confirmed the validity of the criticism.

The High Court dismissed an appeal by Sutcliffe in 2010, confirming that he would serve a whole life tariff and would never be released from prison.

3. Mary Ann Cotton (14 - 21+)

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(Mary Ann Cotton)

Mary Ann Cotton (born Mary Ann Robson; 31 October 1832 – 24 March 1873) was an English woman convicted of murdering her children. She was believed to have murdered up to 21 people, mainly by arsenic poisoning.

Born:  Mary Ann Robson
Classification:  Serial killer
Characteristics:  Poisoner - To collect insurance money
Proven victims:  14
Possible victims:  21+
Date of murder:  1857 - 1872
Date of arrest:  1873
Date of birth:  October 1, 1832
Victims profile:  Eight of her own children, seven stepchildren, her mother, three husbands, a lover – and an inconvenient friend
Method of murder:  Poisoning (arsenic)
Location:  North East England, England, United Kingdom
Status:  Executed by hanging in Durham prison on March 24, 1873

In 1871, 40-year-old Mary Ann Cotton and her husband, 39-year-old Frederick moved into a home in County Durham, with his two stepsons and her 7-month-old baby.  Two months later Frederick died of gastric fever and one of Mary's lovers, Joseph Natrass moved in.

In the space of a month Belle's baby, Natrass and Frederick's son all died in the house.  On the 12 July 1872 the other son of Frederick died, all the deaths caused suspicion and a neighbour went to the police.

A post mortem was carried out on the stepson and it revealed him to be poisoned with arsenic.  The bodies of the other dead were exhumed and they showed that arsenic was the cause of death.  Mary was arrested and charged with the murder of her stepson.   She went to trial in March 1873, claiming that they were accidentally killed by arsenic contained in wallpaper, but the prosecution had evidence that she had purchased arsenic.  Mary Ann Cotton was found guilty and sentenced to death.

Cotton was suspected of the murders of 14 people, in her older life twenty one people close to her died.  Her motive was gain, as she would marry, kill and collect the insurance money, then repeat it again.

On March 24, 1873, Mary Cotton was hanged. The execution was botched with Mary failing to die from the initial drop after the gallow's trapdoor opened. Instead, she slowly choked to death as she dangled on the end of the noose.

In spite of the fact that she maintained her innocence to the end, her reputation as the first female serial killer in Britain stands, and her story is the subject of a children's rhyme:

 – Mary Ann Cotton, she's dead and she's rotten, lying in bed with her eyes wide open

 – Sing, sing. What song should I sing? Mary Ann Cotton is tied up with string

 – Where? Where? She's up in the air, and they're selling puddings for a penny pair

2. William Burke and William Hare (16 - 16+)

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(William Burke and William Hare)

The Burke and Hare murders, or West Port murders, were a series of murders committed in Edinburgh, Scotland, over a period of about ten months in 1828. The killings were attributed to Irish immigrants William Burke and William Hare, who sold the corpses of their 16 victims to Doctor Robert Knox as dissection material for his well-attended anatomy lectures. Burke and Hare's alleged accomplices were Burke's mistress, Helen McDougal, and Hare's wife, Margaret Laird.

From their acts came the now archaic British word "burking", originally meaning to smother a victim or to commit an anatomy murder but which later passed into general use as a word for any suppression or cover-up.

Born:  Ireland
Died:  28 January 1829 (aged 36–37) (Burke)
Cause of death:  Hanged
Criminal penalty:  Death (Burke)
Proven victims:  16
Possible victims:  16+
Location:  Scotland, United Kingdom

On Monday, November 3, 1828, Edinburgh awoke to the horrifying news that the most atrocious murders of the decade -- of the century -- had been committed in the West Port district of the Old Town. William Burke and William Hare, together with Helen M'Dougal and Margaret Hare, were accused of killing 16 people over the course of 12 months, in order to sell their cadavers as "subjects" for dissection. Their purchaser was Dr. Robert Knox, a well-regarded anatomical lecturer with a flourishing dissecting establishment in Surgeon's Square. The ensuing criminal investigation and trial raised troubling questions about the common practices by which medical men obtained cadavers, about the lives of the poor in Edinburgh's back alleys, about the ability of the police to protect the public from deliberate, unprovoked murder for gain. 

The murders were discovered when two of Burke's lodgers, Ann and James Gray, grew suspicious about the unexpected disappearance of a visitor, Madgy Docherty, whom they had met in Burke's house the night before. They found her dead body under the bed and went for the police. 

Burke, M'Dougal, and William and Margaret Hare were arrested for Docherty's murder. William and Margaret Hare turned King's witnesses, that is, witnesses for the prosecution, in return for immunity. Burke and M'Dougal were tried for murder on December 24, 1828. M'Dougal was acquitted with the distinctively Scots verdict, Not Proven. Burke was convicted and sentenced to death. He was executed on January 28, 1829. His body was dissected and publicly exhibited. Their preferred method of murder, suffocation by leaning on and compressing the chest, has been known ever since as "burking."

The story of Burke and Hare has made its way into popular culture through Edinburgh's Blackwood's Magazine, through Robert Louis Stevenson, and through Gil Grissom of  CSI. Popular movie versions include Robert Wise's The Body Snatcher, with Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff, Freddie Francis's The Doctor and the Devils, with Timothy Dalton and Jonathan Pryce, and John Landis's Burke and Hare, with Simon Pegg and Andy Serkis.

1. Harold Shipman (218 - 250+)

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(Harold Shipman)

Harold Frederick Shipman (14 January 1946 – 13 January 2004) was a British doctor and one of the most prolific serial killers in recorded history.

Alias:  Dr. Death, The Angel Of Death
Classification:  Serial killer
Characteristics:  Poisoner - One of the most prolific serial killers in recorded history
Proven victims:  218
Possible victims:  250+
Date of murders:  1974-1975 / 1977-1998
Date of arrest:  September 7, 1998
Date of birth:  January 14, 1946
Method of murder:  Poisoning  (lethal injections of diamorphine)
Location:  West Yorkshire/Greater Manchester, England, United Kingdom
Status:  Found guilty of 15 murders. Sentenced to life imprisonment and the judge recommended that he never be released on January 31, 2000. Committed suicide by  hanging himself in his cell at Wakefield Prison in West Yorkshire on January 13, 2004

In March 1998, Dr Linda Reynolds of the Brooke Surgery in Hyde, prompted by Deborah Massey from Frank Massey and Son's funeral parlour, expressed concerns to John Pollard, the coroner for the South Manchester District, about the high death rate among Shipman's patients. In particular, she was concerned about the large number of cremation forms for elderly women that he had needed countersigned. The matter was brought to the attention of the police, who were unable to find sufficient evidence to bring charges; The Shipman Inquiry later blamed the police for assigning inexperienced officers to the case. Between 17 April 1998, when the police abandoned the investigation, and Shipman's eventual arrest, he killed three more people. His last victim was Kathleen Grundy who was found dead at her home on 24 June 1998. Shipman was the last person to see her alive, and later signed her death certificate, recording "old age" as the cause of death.

Grundy's daughter, lawyer Angela Woodruff, became concerned when solicitor Brian Burgess informed her that a will had been made, apparently by her mother. There were doubts about its authenticity. The will excluded her and her children, but left £386,000 (equivalent to £590,000 in 2015) to Shipman. Burgess told Woodruff to report it, and went to the police, who began an investigation. Grundy's body was exhumed, and when examined was found to contain traces of diamorphine, often used for pain control in terminal cancer patients. Shipman was arrested on 7 September 1998, and was found to own a typewriter of the kind used to make the forged will.

The police then investigated other deaths Shipman had certified, and created a list of 15 specimen cases to investigate. They discovered a pattern of his administering lethal doses of diamorphine, signing patients' death certificates, and then falsifying medical records to indicate that they had been in poor health.

On 31 January 2000, a jury found Shipman guilty of 15 murders. He was sentenced to life imprisonment and the judge recommended that he never be released.

After his trial, The Shipman Inquiry, chaired by Dame Janet Smith, began on 1 September 2000. Lasting almost two years, it was an investigation into all deaths certified by Shipman. About 80% of his victims were women. His youngest victim was a 41-year-old man. Much of Britain's legal structure concerning health care and medicine was reviewed and modified as a direct and indirect result of Shipman's crimes. Shipman is the only British doctor who has been found guilty of murdering his patients.

Shipman died on 13 January 2004, after hanging himself in his cell at Wakefield Prison in West Yorkshire. His suicide occurred one day before his 58th birthday.

Prescription For Murder, a book by journalists Brian Whittle and Jean Ritchie, reports two theories on why Shipman forged the will: one is that he wanted to be caught because his life was out of control; the other theory put forward is that he planned to retire at age 55 and then leave the United Kingdom.

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