Serial Killers

By the summer of 1984, Leonard Lake finished construction on his fallout shelter. There, Lake and his partner-in-crime, Charles Ng, tortured, raped, and murdered countless female victims. But women weren’t their only targets. Over the course of the next year, the murderous duo even killed off entire families. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Fearing a nuclear apocalypse was imminent, survivalists Leonard Lake and Charles Ng dreamed of building a bunker in the middle of nowhere. Only, it wasn’t just meant to withstand the nuclear fallout — they wanted to use it to imprison female sex slaves. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

After he killed his friend Cherie in 1980, Randy Woodfield was a clear suspect in the murder — but he still managed to walk free. The failed football star went on to commit a horrifying string of assaults and murders along the West Coast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

He was a star football player in the early 1970s. A talented athlete with every chance for boundless success. But he developed a nasty temper, and a ferocious sense of entitlement. Whatever Randy Woodfield wanted, he was going to take. By any means necessary.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

After his first three murders, Kenneth McDuff was quickly apprehended and brought to trial. But while it seems like that should be the end of the story, the tale of Kenneth McDuff still had a long way to go… Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Kenneth Allen McDuff led a charmed life. He was an angelic child. At least, that's what his doting mother thought. But in reality, Kenneth concealed a sadistic desire to hurt people, and his first murders left his hometown shaken. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

As a long-haul trucker, Eckert realized his job afforded him the perfect conditions to kill. And claiming victims was the perfect way to finally complete his macabre trophy — a life-sized human doll, complete with a full head of hair. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

From a young age, Volker Eckert displayed a strange fascination with women’s hair. His fetish led him to murder in 1974, when he was just 14 years old. Eckert spent the next decades assaulting women across Western Europe. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Some serial killers’ reigns of terror are cut mercifully short, due to careless mistakes or careful police work. Pedro Alonso López was not one of those killers. The number of his victims is staggering — but the way his story ends is perhaps the most terrifying of all. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

John Joseph Joubert was plagued by disturbing daydreams, along with a horrifying urge to hurt little boys, and in the 1980s, he finally acted on both. But when he targeted a teacher's young students, her determination signalled the end of his deadly spree. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Having graduated from brutal assaults to murders, Paul Ogorzow felt untouchable as he rode the rails, throwing his victims off speeding trains. But every train has to stop somewhere, and Paul's was headed for one very specific ending: swift and brutal justice. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Coming of age alongside Adolf Hitler's political rise, Paul Ogorzow took his cue from the Nazi party, and looked at some of his fellow Germans as little more than rodents to be stamped out. He took advantage of World War II to carry out his terrifying attacks around Berlin. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

There are few criminals so reviled as a child killer. David Elliot Penton was one of them. His crimes were so horrendous, he earned the nickname "The Bogey Man." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A lifelong drifter and con man, Roy Melanson charmed and manipulated his way into his victims’ lives beginning in the 1960s. As his crimes became more gruesome, his vagabond lifestyle made him virtually impossible to track down. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Avoiding capture as Amherst’s terrifying “Bike Path Rapist” emboldened Sanchez to commit his first murder in 1990. His crimes were escalating — but inexplicably, after nearly two decades of violence, he vanished. Twelve years later, the Bike Path Killer returned. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

An elusive rapist stalked areas around Buffalo, New York, for decades beginning in the late 1970s. When he moved to a city once dubbed the “Safest City in America,” he began using his signature weapon to not just subdue… but to kill.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Harry Powers lived a life shrouded in mystery, so tracing his origins is difficult. But here's what we know: he was a conman without a conscience, and he was a ruthless killer whose victim count might be higher than anyone ever imagined... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In 1973, 7-year-old Susie Jaeger fell asleep in a tent with her siblings while on a camping trip with family. When her siblings woke up, the tent had been slashed open and Susie was gone. A team of profilers believed David Meirhofer was responsible for the kidnapping — they just had to prove it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

By 1999, Sells had murdered men, women and children in multiple states, and showed no signs of slowing down. He might never have been stopped, had he not attacked a little girl who survived to identify him, and finally put an end to his decades-long murder spree. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

For over 20 years, Tommy Lynn Sells hitchhiked across the U.S., killing indiscriminately and without mercy. What started as a revenge fantasy involving his childhood abuser grew into a deadly impulse that would claim nearly two dozen lives.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices