15 Serial Killers Who Were Really Overachievers

There have been some incredibly sloppy serial killers over the years, murderers that hacked people up in the streets, then left the scene of the crime soaked from head to toe in viscera - but not the guys on this list. These serial killers who were extremely thorough either made sure to dispose of their victims' bodies in a way that made it seem like they had simply disappeared, or they killed so many potential witnesses that there wasn’t anyone left around to ID them.

You’ve definitely heard of a few of these serial killers who were the hardest to catch, but others were so detail-oriented with their crimes that they were either never caught, or they evaded arrest for so long that it was embarrassing to the police for their stories to get out.

The most common mental picture of serial killers who were meticulous is probably someone in a hazmat suit dissolving bodies in lye, but as you’ll come to discover, these serial killers who were careful weren’t necessarily master criminals, they just knew how to keep from drawing attention to themselves. Although in a few cases, some of these detail-oriented killers did the exact opposite and specifically contacted the police with piles of information for investigators to sift through. And if they weren’t devising plans for the perfect way to dispose a body, they were simply eviscerating everyone in a 50-foot radius. Keep reading and don’t get any big ideas.

This little-known serial killer happens to be one of the most oddly detailed people on this list. With a kill count of 42 women and girls, he proves that he was dedicated to his insanity in the worst way. Known as the "Black Magic Killer," Suradiji began his wave of terror in 1986, after his father allegedly appeared to him in a dream and told him to kill 70 women. Being a total daddy's boy, Suradji set out to make this figment of his imagination proud. Suradji was able to kill so many victims because he was known locally as a witch who regularly helped people solve their problems.

When women came to Suradiji, he would take them to a field, convince them to let him bury them up to their wastes, and then strangle them to death. Then he would drink their saliva in order to increase his strength, then bury them fully with their heads facing towards his home. Keep in mind that he did this 42 times, with designs on killing at least 28 more women and children. Unfortunately for Suradji, police discovered some of the bodies in 1998 and promptly arrested him. He was executed by firing squad a decade later.

Dean Corll, otherwise known as "The Candyman," is one of America's least-known serial killers, but not for lack of trying. From 1970 to 1973 (and possibly earlier), Corll raped and murdered over 27 teenage boys across the Houston area before carefully disposing of their bodies in his personal storage unit and, once that filled up, at Lake Sam Rayburn.

Corll was meticulous in choosing the boys whom he would murder; he preyed on runaways and children from low-income homes in order to keep from raising suspicion. And just to make sure no one came looking for the boys, he would often have them write letters to their family saying that they had left town seeking employment before he strangled them to death. Corll likely would have continued his low-key rampage if it weren't for one of his accomplices shooting and killing him in the middle of his final act. 

In the early '70s, law enforcement was still largely unfamiliar with the idea of a serial killer (the phrase "serial killer" hadn't even been coined yet), and the Houston Sheriff's Department hardly investigated the disappearance of more than two dozen boys. Once Corll's body count had officially surpassed that of California's Juan Corona, the police didn't even continue searching for bodies, making it likely the Candyman's real death toll was considerably higher.

The murders that Ed Kemper committed may have been messy, but you can't say that he didn't go all the way with his batsh*t-crazy plans. At the age of 15, he killed his grandmother, and followed that by killing his grandfather because he didn't want his pop-pop to be sad. That's follow-through.

About half a decade after he got out of a teenage mental institution, he got back into his murder hobby when he started murdering co-eds at their various Berkley-area universities before having sex with their corpses. But he didn't just murder and desecrate their bodies, Kemper would take things to another level by burying one of the girl's heads in his mother's backyard.

Kemper was caught in 1973 when he just kind of gave up on killing women and turned himself over to the police after leaving the state for a little while. At his trial Kemper was found guilty and requested that he be given "death by torture," but was interred for life at the California Medical Facility 

Pack it up, all you wannabe serial killers, John Edward Robinson did it all. He embezzeled thousands of dollars, committed forgery and mail fraud. He even gave himself a Man of the Year award at a banquet that he hosted. This guys loves crime.

After all of that white-collar crime, Robinson began to get into the heavy stuff. In 1984, Robinson started to take in young, usually homeless, women and promise them jobs before quickly killing them and in some cases, selling their babies along with falsified adoption letters. After going to prison for a spell between 1987 and 1993, Robinson discovered the Internet, and that's when his murderous tendencies sunk to even more sadistic depths.

In 1993, Robinson began posting on BDSM chat rooms under the name "Slavemaster," where he lured multiple women to his home under the guise of wanting to start a relationship before killing them and disposing of their bodies in 85-gallon chemical drums that he kept on his property. In 1999, Robinson was already on police radar when he was arrested for allegedly stealing a woman's sex toys, and after an investigation of his property, authorities found the decomposing bodies of two of his victims. 

Out of all the terrible murderers and creeps on this list, Moses Sithole may be the worst of the group - if such a thing is possible. Sithole committed at least 38 rapes and murders (he claimed to have committed more than 75) between 1994 and 1995 in Atteridgeville, Boksburg, and Cleveland, South Africa, before he identified himself as the ABC Killer to a reporter and led the police on a chase through the streets of Johannesburg.

Prior to his murder spree, Sithole had been imprisoned for the rape of a young woman, whom he later said falsified her claims against him, inspiring him to commit his gruesome crimes. In order to kill so many women, Sithole set up a shell charity organization called Youth Against Human Abuse that he claimed was meant to wipe out child abuse. But instead of dedicating himself to that noble cause, he would take every female interviewee that he met into a remote field before beating and raping them, and then strangling them with their underwear before writing "bitch" on their dead bodies. 

Richard Chase, the literally blood-thirsty serial killer from Sacramento, was thorough in his murders in the way that a wood chipper is thorough in pulping a tree. During his murder spree, he shot, bludgeoned, stabbed, and ripped his victims to shreds. His victim whose body was most desecrated was Teresa Wallin, who was not only raped post mortem, but was stabbed multiple times with a butcher knife before having her organs removed (except for her kidneys), her blood drained, and her nipple removed. After everything, Chase shoved dog feces in Teresa's mouth. 

Cottingham's name may not be memorable, but his crimes will sit with you for the rest of your life. Beginning in 1969, this New Jersey computer operator for Blue Shield began strangling women, usually prostitutes but sometimes just ladies around the community, and carving away their limbs in order to simply leave their torsos at the scene of the crime. Sometimes he would light the torsos on fire, and other times he would leave the arms connected to the body and handcuff them behind their backs. The Torso Killer was nothing if not a work in progress.

Cottingham was arrested in the middle of attempting to rape and murder his final victim, a prostitute named Leslie Ann O’Dell, at the same motel where he committed his two previous murders. 

Yang Xinhai didn't have the most prolonged period of terror, but he did commit 67 murders and 23 rapes in a three-year spree that took place between 1999 and 2003. During those years, he moved around the provinces of Henan, Anhui, Shandong, and Hebei while using a hammer to kill his victims. Often he would murder entire families after entering their homes in the middle of the night.

After Xinhai was caught in a nightclub bust, he told state officials that he didn't have a motive, and that he just liked to kill people. "When I killed people I had a desire (to kill more). This inspired me to kill more. I don't care whether they deserve to live or not. It is none of my concern," Yang continued, "I have no desire to be part of society. Society is not my concern."

While Xinhai may have not been as interested in covering up his crimes as some of the other killers on this list (he actually seemed proud about the fact that he didn't hide his crimes), he was definitely driven to act on his nightmarish impulses more than some killers, who take years to build up to their over-the-top spree-killing phase. And his murdering of entire families proves that he's a guy that likes to get the job done. 

Randy Kraft, better known as the "Scorecard Killer" or the "Freeway Killer," is a very 70s serial killer who fell by the wayside when guys like John Wayne Gacy and Richard Ramirez took center stage as America's bogeymen. Throughout the '70s and early '80s, Kraft picked up male hitchhikers, roofied them, and proceeded to torture, sexually abuse, and kill them before ditching their bodies on freeway ramps. He definitely killed 16 victims, but is believed to have murdered up to 65 men throughout his time spent driving up and down the west coast.

Kraft's meticulous attention to detail came in the form of a scorecard that was discovered in his truck after he was apprehended in 1983. The card contained a coded list of victims made up of innocuous words and phrases like "EDM" and "Golden Sails," that refer to either the victims themselves, or where their bodies were unceremoniously dumped. Despite being sentenced to death in 1989, Kraft still sits on death row to this day.

Is there anything more detail-oriented than building an entire sex/torture chamber adjacent to your home, and then recording an audio welcome for each woman whom you drug and kidnap from the same New Mexico drifter bar? David Parker Ray, better known as the "Toy Box Killer," was a true monster who not only planned out his kidnappings to a T, but was obsessed with wiping the memories of the victims that he kept alive, experimented on the women that he raped and tortured until he actually had some success. Even though it's obvious that Parker had been raping, torturing, and killing women for years, he was so meticulous with his crimes that investigators were still searching for the remains of his victims 16 years after he was arrested.