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20 Deadly Necrophilia Serial Killers

Originally published by Faith in February 2023 and updated by Faith in March 2024

Serial killers comprise of different people who kill for different reasons and use different methods. Some brutal serial killers ever known in history were necrophiles in that they usually exhibit a desire to have sex with human remains. Most necrophiliacs usually stick to their modus operandi for many years while committing heinous acts. Therefore this article will explore the twenty most deadly necrophilia serial killers so that the reader can understand what prompted them to kill and the psychology behind their acts.

1 Jeffrey Dahmer

One of the most vocal and open necrophiliacs is undoubtedly Jeffrey Dahmer. He gave several interviews after being apprehended in 1991, outlining his motivations for killing several men and having sex with their corpses. He stated in an interview that his main motivation for performing the crimes was that he liked being in complete control with the person that he found physically alluring. When one hears this statement they might find it romantic until they discover that he is talking about corpses.

2 Peter Kurten

Cannibal, rapist, serial killer, and necrophile all describe Peter Kurten, also known as the vampire of Düsseldorf. Extreme poverty and a violent father contributed to his difficult childhood and may have influenced the way he turned out. At the age of nine, he murdered his classmates. He later slew close to 68 individuals and drank the blood of several victims. He eventually received nine death sentences for such heinous acts and was put to death.

3 Victor Ardisson

Also known as the Vampire of Muy, Victor was a prolific necrophiliac. He was a gravedigger and an undertaker in a town called Muy in France. For many years, the undertaker would commit several acts of necrophilia and when he was finally apprehended, he confessed to having sexual intercourse with more than a hundred corpses.

He went on and confessed that he dug up corpses and took them home. This story was backed up when the police raided his home and found the body of a three-year-old girl together with a skull that belonged to a thirteen-year-old girl.

4 Lam Kor-Wan

Lam was a taxi driver that used his job as a way of getting his victims. He was a notorious sexual predator that murdered four women and proceeded to mutilate their bodies. After he was apprehended, police officers in Hong Kong learned that he had intercourse with his victims’ corpses before removing their sexual organs and pickling them in jars. He was sentenced to life in prison and earned the nickname The Jars Murderer.

5 Earl Nelson

Elson was sometimes referred to as “the Gorilla Man” or “the Gorilla Killer.” He was a devoted Pentecostal and had profound sexual issues. His preferred method of murder was to pose as a renter. Once he had earned the trust of the potential landlord, he would strangle them, engage in sexual activity with their corpses, and occasionally bury the body beneath a bed. Most of the words from Nelson’s trial are simply statements about how only God could judge him. Nelson never completely admitted to being a murderer or a necrophiliac. He was sentenced to death and later executed.

6 Anthony Merino

Anthony was a 27-year-old laboratory technician at the time of his arrest. He was apprehended after being caught by the hospital’s security guard defiling the corpse of a 92-year-old female patient who had just passed away. The security guard narrated that he had seen Anthony defiling the corpse of the woman. The hospital fired him immediately and when he went to trial, the judge sentenced him to seven years in prison.

7 Ted Bundy

Ted Bundy is among the serial killers labelled as the most prolific. He was a necrophiliac that committed a long list of heinous crimes. The first known instance of him having sex with a corpse was in 1975 with the body of his victim Lynette Culver who was 12 years old. Ted confessed that he lured Lynette into his hotel room where he drowned her in the bathtub and proceeded to have intercourse with her corpse before dumping her body in the river. He also had more than a hundred other victims whom he admitted to having had intercourse with their corpses.

8 Dennis Nilsen

Nilsen terrorised London between 1978 to 1983. He would trap and murder men and then bath them and redress them. He then would keep the bodies in his house before he dismembered them and keep their body parts within his apartment. Before he dismembered them, Nielsen admitted to using the victim’s thighs and bodies to get off as argued that his victim’s bodies were too beautiful to be penetrated.

9 John Christie

He was an English serial Killer and also a necrophiliac that committed his crimes between the 1940s and the 1950s. Among his victims was his wife whom he killed by strangling her. The bodies of his other victims were recovered in his garden. John would kill his victims and then proceed to brutally rape them before hiding the corpses in his flat and garden.

10 Gary Ridgeway

He is among the most vicious necrophiliac serial killers in the United States. Gary was responsible for the murder of many young girls and women as he would target sex workers who were easily accessible and strangle them before dumping their bodies in the forest. He would then return and defile the bodies before dumping them at the green river. When he was arrested, he confessed to having killed more than 71 women before he stopped counting.

11 Patrick Kearney

A picture of Partrik Kearney. , Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Patrick Kearney was a notorious serial killer who was active in Southern California from the early 1960s up to the late 1970s. He was also popularly known as the Freeway killer or the Trash Bag killer. The child molester, necrophile, serial killer and zoophile is believed to have killed more than 28 young boys and men during the time that he was active.  He targeted hitchhikers and young men that he would pick from gay bars, lure them to isolated places and proceed to kill them.

His modus operandi involved shooting his victims and then proceeding to sexually assault them. He would typically shoot his victims in the temple above the ear with his right hand while steering the car at the same speed to avoid suspicions. He would then proceed to sexually assault the corpses of the victims and later dispose of the bodies in trash bags along the freeway and in canyons hence the moniker that he was known by. He was finally arrested in 1977 after he surrendered to the police, and confessed to his crimes to avoid the death sentence. Kearney was sentenced to 21 life sentences and is still incarcerated at Mule Creek State Prison.

12 Edmund Kemper

A mugshot of Edmund Kemper. , Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The serial killer was popularly known as the Co-ed Killer and the Ogre of Aptos who was convicted of killing one girl and seven women. He started going on a killing spree at an early age when he murdered his grandparents at 15 years old. His victims were mostly female college students who were hitchhiking along the roads of Santa Cruz County. He would offer them rides and proceed to take them to isolated places and stab them or strangle them. Kemper would then take the corpse of his victims back home where he would decapitate them and perform oral sex on their dismembered heads. Kemper would then sexually assault the corpse. He was finally apprehended in 1973 and when on trial, Kemper confessed that he had killed the women because he wanted them for himself. He was sentenced to eight life sentences that were to run concurrently.

13 Edward Gein

Gein was popularly known as the Butcher of Plainfield who was active for a decade from 1947 to 1957 during this period he killed two victims and was suspected of killing 7 others. He also snatched 9 bodies from graves he had desecrated. He came into the limelight and gained notoriety in 1957 when police authorities found out that he exhumed the bodies and kept parts like skins and skulls as keepsakes. He was arrested and declared unfit to stand trial and committed to a mental institution but in 1968, he was declared fit to undergo trial where he was found guilty and was committed to Mendota Mental Health Institute to serve his sentence. He died of lung cancer while still at the institution.

14 Joseph Vacher

French serial killer Joseph Vacher. , Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The French serial killer was popularly known as the South-East Ripper and the French Ripper. He was active between 1894 and 1897 and during this period he is said to have killed between 11 and 27 people. He first started out in the army to escape the poverty in his home as he was born to a family of 15 children. He did not stay long in the army as he was dissatisfied with the slow career progression which made him attempt to take his own life by slicing his throat and thus led to his dismissal. He then started on his killing spree when he was 25 years old and killed 11 people where five were teenage girls, one woman and five teenage boys. He would target victims who were in isolated places and stab them before proceeding to sexually assault them. He was arrested, tried found guilty and sentenced to death in October 1898. Vacher was executed by a guillotine in December 1898.

15 Henry Lee Lucas

Lucas was popularly known as the Confession Killer, a serial killer who terrorised the state of Texas from 1960 to 1983. He committed his first murder in 1951 when he killed Laura Everlean Burnsler, a 17-year-old girl who had refused his advances. He then went on to kill his mother Nellie Viola Lucas because she had been displeased with his choice of a fiancee. He also killed two other people in 1983.

While in prison having been convicted for the murder of his mother and two other victims, Lucas went on a confession spree and confessed to approximately 600 other murders. His confessions led to a lot of cases being closed. However, some of his confessions did not line up with the murders which led to the public questioning the credibility of the Texas State Patrol. His death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment but he did not serve his sentence for long as he died of congestive heart failure in 2001.

16 Ondrej Rigo

The Slovakian serial killer and necrophile were popularly known as the Sock Killer or the International Killer who was active in Munich and Amsterdam from 1990 to 1992. During the two years that he was active, he killed nine victims and wounded one. His modus operandi involved sneaking into basement apartments at night or very early in the morning. He would wear socks on his hands to avoid leaving fingerprints and then proceed to beat his victims to death using a metal rod. After the victim was dead, he would cover the upper body sexually assault the corpse and then smoke a cigarette after he was done. He was apprehended in 1992 hours after he had just murdered another victim. He went to trial and was found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment in Leopoldov Prison where he served his sentence until he died on 14th June 2022.

17 David Fuller

A picture of David Fuller., CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

The English killer and necrophile is a serial killer that has been active until recently when he was apprehended in 2020. He was convicted of two murders of Wendy and Carolin which happened in 1987 and were popularly known as the Bedsit murders. He was finally identified as the murderer when his DNA sample matched the sample that had been collected from the crime scene. At the time of his arrest, the serial killer had been charged with mortuary offences in that he had recorded himself abusing corpses as he worked as a hospital electrician. He was sentenced to life imprisonment and is now serving his sentence at HMP Frankland.

18 Anatoly Slivko

The Soviet serial killer and necrophile was active between 1964 and 1985 in the soviet union. During the time that he was active, it is believed that he murdered more than seven victims. He targeted young boys whom he murdered, mutilated and proceeded to sexually assault them. The boys were between 11 years and 15 years old which is very chilling that he targeted very young boys who were defenceless as his victims. His modus operandi involved making the victim lose consciousness, sexually assaulting them and dismembering them before setting their bodies on fire. He would also film the whole process and document it in diaries. He was arrested in 1985 and sentenced to death in 1986. Slivko was executed by shooting in September 1989.

19 Jerry Brudos

Jerry Brudos was popularly known as the Lust Killer and the Shoe Fetish Slayer. The serial killer and necrophile was active in Salem, Oregon from 1968 to 1969 and during this time he murdered four women. All of the murders were done within his compound in the basement or the garage. He would strangle his victims to death, engage in acts of necrophilia cut a part of their bodies like breasts and feet and keep it as memorabilia. He was finally arrested in 1969 and sentenced to three consecutive life terms. Brudos later died in prison in 2006 from liver cancer.

20 Thor Nis Christiansen

The Danish-American Necrophile and serial killer was active in California in the late 1976 to early 1977. During the few months that he was active, he took the lives of four victims.  He would target hitchhikers pick them up and proceed to shoot them with a .22 calibre pistol and then proceed to sexually assault them. He also targeted victims with straight hair and with the same sense of style and similar build. He was apprehended in 1979 and sentenced to life imprisonment. He died in prison after another inmate who was not identified stabbed him to death in 1981.

Here is an article about the 15 infamous serial killers from Ohio