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Who are the scariest Chicago serial killers 

Chicago being a state and not a city has still managed to harbour and produce several hugely notorious serial killers over the years. These serial killers have left tragic and terrifying marks in the history of Chicago in the way they conducted their murders in a gruesome fashion. They either stabbed, poisoned, strangled, burnt, shot, molested or suffocated their victim to death. Some of the serial killers were business owners, others were clowns and even drifters but they all shared the same trait a disregard for human life and a sense of cruelty.

Some of the serial killers on this list escaped upon their arrest, others committed suicide and most of them were captured and exposed to severe punishment by law. It is believed that some of the serial killers killed even more people than they were convicted of killing, and the true toll may never be known. Therefore, this article is going to explore some of the notable serial killers and how they committed unlawful acts in the streets of Chicago.

1. John Wayne Gacy

John Wayne Gacy’s mugshot. , Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Gacy was a former building contractor and amateur clown who lived in Norwood Park, a small community north of Chicago. Between 1972 and 1978, Gacy assaulted and murdered 33 men and boys. He lured the men to his home and strangled them with a noose or stab them to death, often during or after sex. After their death, most of his victims were buried in a crawlspace beneath his home, and others were dumped in the Des Plaines River. He was tried in 1980 and confessed to the killings before he was executed by lethal injection on May 10, 1994.

2. H. H. Holmes

Holmes was one of the country’s first known serial killers who designed and commissioned his own hotel called the World鈥檚 Fair Hotel. He designed the hotel with secret rooms, slides, false floors, trap doors, windowless rooms, chutes and gas chambers. Holmes would constantly change his contractors and shuffled the workers so that they could not get a clear idea of the floor plan or what the building was for.

The establishment of the hotel opened just in time for the World Columbian Exhibition in 1893. This brought him plenty of young women, whom he would torture either by hanging, starving, asphyxiating them in the hotel鈥檚 soundproof rooms, dehydrating or gassing them to death. He then sent their bodies to a specially designed killing floor in the basement, where he would butcher and dispose them.

Holmes confessed to 27 murders, though he claimed to have murdered up to 200 people. He was later apprehended and hanged in 1896 and the building became a tourist hotspot but was eventually pulled down

3. The Ripper Crew

The Ripper Crew consisted of Robin Gecht a former employee of John Wayne Gacy, Edward Spreitzer and the brothers Andrew and Thomas Kokoraleis. This gang was a satanic-influenced cult that abducted its victims鈥� and performed necrophilia on them. They would hack off their victims鈥� breasts, take turns to rape the wound, before masturbating into it and thereafter dispose of their bodies in Chicago and surrounding suburbs.

The gang was arrested in 1982 and one of the gang members, Andrew Kokoraleis was executed; Edward Spreitzer was sentenced to death while Robin Getch got a sentence of 120 years imprisonment, and Thomas Kokoraleis was the lucky one who was released on parole after 37 years in prison.

4. William Heirens

William Heirens was dubbed “The Lipstick Killer” after leaving a taunting message to the police on the wall of his second victim. In the message he had begged the police to catch him before he could kill more victims since he felt he couldn’t control himself. Heirens was finally stopped thanks to a few eyewitness reports and a bloody fingerprint he had left at the crime scene. He became the longest-serving inmate in Chicago history, having spent more than 65 years in prison before his death in 2012.

5. Richard Speck

On July 13, 1966, Richard took 9 female nurses, hostage, when he broke into the South Chicago Community Hospital. He took turns stabbing or strangling the first seven nurses, before sexually assaulting and then murdering the eighth while the ninth hid under the bed. Speck was captured and sentenced to death in 1971 but then his death sentence was reduced to life in prison after the US Supreme Court ruled the penalty was unconstitutional. He died of a heart attack while in prison in 1991.

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6. Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb

Richaard Loeb and Nathan Leop. 

Nathan and Richard were the University of Chicago students who kidnapped and murdered 14-year-old Bobby Franks, who was Richard鈥檚 cousin. They lured Bobby into the car in the pretence of giving him a ride home. They instead killed him with a chisel, then disposed of his body in Wolf Lake in Hammond. Because of their wealth, they committed this murder in order to test the limits of their legal invincibility. Unfortunately, they didn鈥檛 possess as much power as they thought and they were convicted after they confessed to the murder. Nathan and Richard were given life sentences plus 99 years in prison. Richard ended up being murdered by another inmate while Nathan was released on parole in 1958 and lived in Puerto Rico before dying of a heart attack in 1971.

7. Al Capone gang

On Valentine’s Day, 1929, it is believed that members of the Al Capone gang attacked members of an Irish gang in a garage. They lined up the Irish gang against one wall of the garage and opened fire, executing all of them. The victims included Adam Heyer, Frank Gusenberg, Pete Gusenberg, John May, AI Weinshank, and James Clark as well as a visitor, Dr Reinhardt H. Schwimmer. The incident is famously known as 鈥淭he Saint Valentine鈥檚 Day Massacre鈥�     

8.Frank Deluca and Patricia Columbo

In the suburb of Elk Grove, Il, northwest of Chicago, Patricia Columbo a 16-year-old, began a strange sexual affair with Frank Deluca, a 39-year-old married man who ran a pharmacy. The affair continued for three years before Frank and Patricia decided to kill Columbo鈥檚 parents and her brother in order to receive her inheritance money. In the wee hours of May 4, 1976, Patricia and Deluca crept into her family home and shot her mother and father to death. Patricia then stabbed her brother more than 100 times with a pair of scissors.

The couple were arrested after Deluca’s acquaintances had requested their services before committing the murders with Patricia. It later turned out that Patricia’s parents had already removed her from their will and there was never any inheritance to begin with.

9. Andre Crawford

Andre Crawford was a famous serial killer, rapist and necrophile who killed 11 women all prostitutes and drug addicts, in Chicago鈥檚 Englewood neighborhood between 1993 and 1999. He lured the women into abandoned homes and then he would strangle or stab them to death, then later have sex with their corpses. In 2009, Andre was apprehended and he confessed to all the murders with another 3 murders and several other attacks in which the victims survived. He was sentenced to life in prison but died in 2017 in the Illinois Department of Corrections.

10. Joseph Miller

Joseph Miller was a notable serial killer who was convicted for killing two prostitutes in Chicago in 1993. He was then given parole to Peoria in 1993 and he proceeded to kill three local prostitutes and an 88-year-old woman whom he worked for as a landscaper. He was suspected by the detectives of killing four other women in Chicago but they were unable to link him to the murders. He was convicted and sentenced to death, but he was later commuted to life imprisonment without a chance of parole.  

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