Although a predominantly North American activity, serial killing is on the rise in all points of the globe. Particularly, with shifts in the geopolitical world order, serial killing has become part of the national landscape in South Africa and the Soviet Union. A predominantly white phenomenon, there has been a dramatic increase in the amount of black serial killers. Even historically peaceful places like Costa Rica now have a serial killer. The following is a list of all active and unsolved cases of serial slaughter.

Wichita serial killer resurfaces

KILLER CAUGHT -  SUSPECT NAME:  DENNIS RADER

Dennis Rader - City Dog Catcher

This is who they were looking for?
A composite drawing after one of the rape/murders

WICHITA, Kan., March 26, 2005 (UPI) -- A Wichita, Kansas, newspaper has received an eerie letter indicating a seven-time serial killer from the 1970s is still active.

The Wichita Eagle received a letter, a photocopy of a dead woman's driver's license and three photographs of her after her death.

Each picture shows the victim in a slightly different pose and with her clothing arranged in a slightly different manner.

The letter brought new evidence to the Sept. 16, 1986, strangulation death of Vicki Wegerle, who was found dead in her home. The crime was never solved.

"The photographs appear to be authentic," said police Lt. Ken Landwehr, who has been working on the case for nearly 20 years. "There's no doubt that's Vicki Wegerle's picture."

Landwehr said the letter contained no suggestion the killer planned to strike again, and he asked residents to take normal safety precautions.

He said evidence from the Wegerle homicide is being reprocessed at a forensic center using technology that was not available in 1986.

~~~~~

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  "The Green River Killer" (49+) The most prolific  unidentified killer of the Archives. The Green River Killer tallied forty-nine kills between 1982 and 1984 in the Seattle-Tacoma area. It's believed that the killer is a white, middle-aged male. During his two year rampage he enjoyed leaving his victims near the banks of the Green River outside Seattle, thus explaining his moniker. All his victims have been women. He prefers prostitutes, but will kill a runaway or a hitchhiker in a pinch. Some believe that the killer might have died, moved away, was incarcerated, institutionalized, or perhaps just retired. As of August 1988 authorities think that he might have resurfaced in San Diego where he has already bagged ten more women..

NOTE: Here is one serial killer  who is no longer on the street. . MORE

"Twin Cities Killer" (34) No one wants to admit it but evidence points to the existence of one or several serial killers working the streets of Minneapolis and St. Paul. From 1986 to 1994 up to 34 corpses have littered the streets of the Twin Cities. Most of them were prostitutes in their twenties and thirties. Several were mutilated, dismembered, and sometimes even decapitated.

Three scenarios have been posited to explain the growing list of dead. One: there is a number of serial killers preying on prostitutes and drug users. Two: there is one or more serial killers and several murderers who have killed once or twice. Three: there is a number of non-serial killers hunting Twin Cities prostitutes. Whatever the case, 34 unresolved killings should not go unnoticed.

The I-45 Killer(s) (32) Over that last three decades the FBI has chronicled at least 32 dead women in an area a few miles on either side of Interstate 45 along the 50-mile stretch between Houston and Galveston in Texas. The latest victim was discovered in early 1999 by a little boy and his dog when they were out for a walk in some marshy woods. The dog came up with a bone, and then the boy saw a skull. Nearby, the police later would find earrings, shreds of clothing and a belt tied around a tree. Investigators believe the killer used it to bind the young woman while she was sexually assaulted.

Now, for the first time since the first victim's corpse was discovered in 1971, investigators believe they are making progress both in breaking individual cases and devising a method to attack the overall problem. But early indications are not good for those who hoped it could be brought to an end by finding one serial killer who could be captured and put behind bars. "It appears that there may be multiple serial killers," said Don K. Clark, special agent in charge of the FBI's Houston division.

If that suspicion proves true--and investigators caution that they remain far from bringing charges in these crimes--then the bizarre pattern of killings along I-45 would be the result of an equally bizarre occurrence. Police now worry that for nearly three decades this stretch of coastal plain has served as a hunting ground for any number of murderers . Over time, it appears to police, the killers have come and gone but shared in common the site they selected to find their victims--or to dump the bodies of people killed elsewhere.

In fact, the bayous lined with longleaf pine, beech and live oaks appear to have served as a dumping ground not only for local killers but also for Houston's predators. The refineries and ports draw transients. The small towns and country roads have proved easy places to hunt victims. The patchwork of jurisdictions makes it easy to cloak activities simply by crossing the city limits.

The victims in the I-45 cases typically disappeared while out alone, only to be found dead and abused in a remote spot weeks or months later, leaving no hint as to their attacker's identity or motive.

The investigation took an important turn after several particularly horrific and well-publicized crimes in 1997. First, Laura Smither, 12, disappeared while jogging near her home, and then Jessica Lee Cain, 17, vanished, leaving behind only her empty pickup truck parked on the shoulder of I-45. Smither's decapitated body was found in a pond almost three weeks after her disappearance. Cain is still missing.

"Before Laura Smither and Jessica Cain, each one of us was in his own little world, investigating our own individual cases, and we would have no way of knowing that some fellow we wanted to question in one murder, and had been a top suspect, had already been questioned in a very similar murder just a few miles down the highway," said Lt. Tommy Hansen of the Galveston County Sheriff's Department.

Some evidence pointed to a serial killer long ago. Two girls disappeared from the same convenience store in the 1970s. Four bodies were found between 1984 and 1991 in a scrubby patch of pastures dubbed the "killing fields." More subtle patterns now are emerging from a computer analysis of the evidence. The victims seem to cluster according to physical type, such that it appears one killer has a preference for short, slim, brown-haired women. Another killer seems to have demonstrated distinctive habits in the way he disposes of bodies, investigators said.

Stark similarities in several early cases suggest that a serial killer was active in the area in the 1970s, but it is unlikely he will ever be identified because so much time has passed. Further complicating matters, Henry Lee Lucas roamed the Gulf Coast when some of the early I-45 murders took place, but he has not been linked definitively to any of the unsolved cases.

Police have been closely following a suspect who remains at large on the I-45 corridor, but who never has been publicly identified. "We know a guy, we know him very well, a guy who has killed before and who had some kind of contact with five of the girls, but all the evidence is circumstantial," said police Lt. Gary D. Ratliff of League City, a town of 50,000 where the "killing fields" are located.

The unnamed suspect suffered physical injuries in an automobile accident a few years ago and appears to have gone "dormant" since then, Ratliff said. While that is good news in one sense, his lack of activity makes it less likely he might commit a mistake that would allow him to be caught.

In the mid- to late '80s, a task force studied the killings of six prostitutes who worked in Houston's Montrose area. In the early '70s a number of young girls were abducted and murdered. In all ther are about 200 unsolved murders of women and girls in Houston and the surrounding areas since 1971.

"New Orleans Serial Killer" (24 +/-) There is a possible serial killer, or serial killers, roaming the streets of New Orleans logging in at 24 dead. The vicitms are mostly prostitutes who were strangled, their stripped bodies dumped in New Orleans, Jefferson Parish, and swamps further west of the city. The killings started in 1991. Most of the victims were abducted in Algiers and Treme, two of the poorest neighborhoods of the city. A New Orleans police officer, Victor Gant is the suspect in the murders of two out of 24 victims. While being investigated for two death -- one of which was his girlfriend -- Gant remained in the force in a desk job. After a domestic dispute with his current girlfriend Gant was suspended from the force.

On March 2, 1998, another suspect, Russell Ellwood was arrested in connection to two of the killings. Ellwood, a former cab driver, is suspected in eight more killings. However, authorities still believe more than one suspect was responsible for the string of prostitute slayings. "We never thought, from the beginning, that this was the work of one person."

"Possible Vancouver Serial Killer" (27) Though they have no bodies or hard evidience to back their claims, prostitutes in one of Canada's poorest neighborhoods suspect a serial killer is responsible for the disappearance of up to 31 sex-trade workers since 1995. However, according to a spokesperson representing the prostitutes, there can be no other explanation for neighbors and friends in the HIV-ravaged downtown Vancouver neighborhood who have been seen on a corner one minute, then gone for good the next. (MORE)

The investigation was triggered by a woman who provided police with information about the 1981 slaying in San Diego's Balboa Park that only someone who was there and witnessed the killing or who received information from the killer could have known. The female informant, whom authorities have not identified, showed authorities the location of the crime and described how it was committed -- all facts that were known only to police.

The woman accused a truck driver of the 1981 killing, as well a string of other slayings across America. The victims were mostly hitchhikers and rostitutes. According to the informant, the trucker may have killed up to 20 people. Many of the victims were killed in Texas and their bodies dumped or buried in shallow graves hundreds of miles away.

San Diego police have obtained DNA from the suspect and has contacted law enforcement officers from other jurisdictions to compare DNA samples from their unsolved cases.

Officials have developed a time-line on the suspect for 1980 to 1990 and are hoping other law enforcement agencies may have unsolved cases that correspond to the trucker's movements. If so, they can then compare any evidence to that of the trucker. Meanwhile, the truck driver remains free.

Phoolan Devi (20+) Known as India's infamous Bandit Queen, Phoolan Devi, 36, is accused of massacring 20 upper-caste men in 1981 in the village of Behmai in northern Uttar Pradesh state. Now a lawmaker, Phoolan had previously been held prisoner and raped by the citizens of Behmai.

Indian police was ordered to arrest Phoolan before February 4, 1997, on a petition filed by Raja Ram, a resident of Behmai village, who claimed that the parole granted to Devi had ended in December. The ruling came seven weeks after the Supreme Court rejected Devi's pleas to throw out 54 charges of murder, robbery, extortion and kidnapping still pending against her.

Devi won a seat in the federal Parliament in 1996 -- after serving 11 years in prison -- by championing the cause of low-caste Hindus. She portrayed her criminal career as part of a struggle between low-caste Hindus like herself and the upper castes in one of India's most backward regions.

Charles Sobhraj (20) Known as "The Serpent" for his cunning and poisonous ways, Charles is Asia's premier serial killer. A French national of Indian and Vietnamese parentage, Sobhraj is suspected of cutting a bloody trail through Asia and Europe killing backpacking tourist. In true serial killing fashion, Sobhraj was a persistent bet-wetter in his youth at a boarding school in Paris. After escaping twice from school to return to Vietnam, Charles started his career as a petty thief by forging checks from his sister's bank account. He soon graduated to become a smuggler and international con man.

For most of his life Charles bounced back and forth from Europe to Asia and led a life devoted to crime. By 1972, the year of his first known murder, he was deeply involved in the heroin trade. Later on he later made a habit of killing off competing heroin traffickers. His preferred method of murder was slipping his victims a lethal drug cocktail and then robbing them of their money and possessions. His favorite victims tended to be European tourist. From 1972 to 1982 he is suspected of committing at least 20 murders in India, Thailand, Afghanistan, Turkey, Nepal, Iran and Hong Kong.

Charles was arrested numerous times in France, Afganistan, Greece, and India, but usually managed to escape or bribe his way out of trouble. He was finally brought to justice in July 1976 after poisoning a busload of French engineering students. Planning to steal their passports so to more easily elude authorities, Charles handed what he said were dysentery pills to 60 students in the lobby of the Vikram Hotel in New Delhi. His plan backfired when the students started passing out while he remained in the lobby.

Found guilty of poisoning the tourist Charles was sent to India's toughest prison where he bribed his way into a privileged type of incarceration. Over the years, "Sir Charles," as his jailers called him, had the run of the place. Guards procured for him everything he wanted -- food, visitors, cell phones, and numerous female companions.

On March 16, 1986, as his release date approached, Sobhraj escaped from the Tihar prison. The cunning killer threw a birthday party for himself and invited all guards and prisoners. Among the party treats were cakes, cookies and grapes. Surreptitiously, "Sir Charles" injected sleeping pills into the grapes knocking out all guest except for himself and four other inmates who proceeded waltz out of the front gate into the New Delhi streets. Sobhraj was so cocky, he had one of the group take photographs along the way. As a fugitive on the lam Charles behaved more like a vacationing college student. He was soon recaptured and found guilty of having an Italian-made pistol in his possession. Later he confessed to having purposely handed himself to authorities so to avoid extradition to Thailand where he was wanted for five murders and could be given the death penalty.

On February 5, 1997, New Delhi's metropolitan magistrate, Prem Kumar, said Sobhraj had already remained in jail for a "period more than the maximum punishment prescribed" under the Indian law. In an effort to get him out of the country as quickly as possible all weapon charges against him were dropped. On February 14 Charlie was granted bail and, fearing extradition to Thailand, refused to leave his cell until he received his identity papers from the French embassy.

Minutes after his release he was rearrested for being in India without valid documents. The Indian government announced its intention of deporting Sobhraj back to France once his papers were in order citing that, "his continued presence in the country threatens law and order". To expedite his departure from India, a reluctant French Embassy supplied a paperless Sobhraj with a travel permit to France after wrangling over his status as a French national.

Saying he is ready for a secluded and tranquil life after making a $15 million movie and book deal with French actor-producer Yves Renier, Charles left his New Delhi jail cell and boarded an Air France jet to the Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris. Ever the sensitive killer, he told The Associated Press that he had reflected on his past, and "deeply regrets" certain aspects of his life. Fond of his Asian dwellings, Charlie said he felt like a stranger in France and hoped to return to India where he wants to open a school for poor children.

A free man in France, Sobhraj has proved to be as ruthless a businessman as he was a killer. A no nonsense celebrity, journalist are required to pay £5,000 to have coffee with him and discuss further monetary arrangements to secure an interview. Having already netted a few million on book and film deals for his autobiography, Sobhraj has proved to be quite the marketable commodity. Publications such as Le Figaro agreed to pay good money for posed pictures of him sitting in Paris cafés answering vapid questions. For him, every word has its price. As his agents is quick to point out: "We're in 1997. Wherever people are offering money, people are taking it. It's the name of the game. No money, no meeting." Who says crime doesn't pay?

Lucian Staniak (20) Known as "The Red Spider," Lucian is considered the most prolific serial killer of Poland. His reign of terror started in 1964. A colorful killer, he left poetic notes commenting on his behavior. He killed his first known victim during a national holiday and left a note declaring: "I picked a juicy flower in Olsztyn and I shall do it again somewhere else, for there is no holiday without a funeral." Over the next three years, this sexual deviant killed and mutilated at least twenty women. His reign of terror was finally uncovered when he slaughtered a fellow member of his Art Lovers Club. His paintings, done mainly in crimson and focusing on scenes of mutilation, made the police a tad suspicious. Tracing his itinerary for the past two years police noticed that it matched perfectly with the string of slayings. After confessing Lucian was sent to an insane asylum in Katowice where he still does a lot of painting.

Sasha & Lyudmila Spesivtsev (19+) In a one man crusade to cleanse modern Russia from the permissiveness of democracy, Sasha Spesivtsev, 27, killed at least 19 street children who he saw as the detritus of society. Inexplicably, with the help of his mother, he also cooked and ate them.

Sasha, an unemployed black marketeer and former mental patient, would lure his homeless victims from the streets and local train stations in the Siberian town of Novokuznetsk to his home. Suspicions of a serial killer active in the area surfaced the summer of 1996 when body parts appeared in river Aba near the school where Sasha's mom, Lyudmila, worked. However, the investigation moved at a snail's pace due to the nature of the victims -- the poor children of the forgotten underclass -- and the inept Russian judicial beaurocracy (see Andrei Chikatilo for further details of Soviet beurocratic blunders).

During the initial stages of the investigation one of Sasha's neighbors repeatedly complained to police of the deathly stench and deafening music coming from his apartment. No one ever came to investigate even though in 1991 a teenage girl was found dead in his place. A year later, when police finally entered his home they found 15-year-old Olga Galtseva dying on the couch with multiple stab wounds to her stomach. In the bathroom they found a headless corpse and in the living room there was a rib cage.

Before dying Olga told police that she, together with two other 13-year-old friends, helped the cannibal mother with some bags to her apartment. Once inside they were trapped by Sasha and a fierce dog. Authorities assume that Olga's two little friends are dead. However, they claim they lack the funds to dig for their bodies or perform any genetic testing to establish the identities of the body parts they have recuperated.

Alexei Bugayets, a prosecutor for the Kemerovo region, which includes Novokuznetsk, said investigators believe they now can prove Spesivtsev killed 19 people, and expect to add dozens of other cases, the Tribune reported. Bugayets said a search of Spesivtsev's apartment revealed 80 bloodstained pieces of clothing. He said tests established that none of them contained blood from anyone in Spesivtsev's family.

Sasha, described by authorities as an "intellectual" who has written some books on philosophy, previously had been released from a psychiatric hospital. He was committed after being convicted of murdering his girlfriend.

In prison he spends all his time undergoing psychiatric testing and writing poems about the evils of democracy. Asked how he justifies his crimes, he rhetorically answered, "How many people have our democracy destroyed?... If people thought about that, there wouldn't be any of this filth. But what can you do?" His mother, on the other hand, has withdrawn into herself and has not uttered a word since her arrest. Sasha, burdened with the heart of a true black marketeer, wants to sell his head to some institute so they can study his brain, and get paid, "in advance, in cigarettes."

Sipho Agmatir Thwala (19) South Africa's alleged "Phoenix Strangler," Sipho Agmatir Thwala, is suspected of raping and strangling 19 victims with their underwear before burying them in shallow graves. On March 31, 1999, the Durban High Court found Thwala guilty of only 16 murders and 10 rapes, and he was sentenced to 506 years in prison. Thwala, 31, of KwaMashu, became the most wanted man in KwaZulu-Natal province, located in eastern South Africa along the Indian Ocean during an alleged year-long reign of terror. At the time of his murderous spree - between 1996 and 1997 - the Phoenix and KwaMashu communities were gripped with terror, not knowing who would be next or when he would strike again.

Thwala, who was acquitted of rape and murder in 1994, was arrested for the serial killings at his Besters squatter camp home in a pre-dawn swoop by police in August 1997. His arrest came days after DNA samples taken from the suspect, who was released on the rape and murder charges in 1994, matched those taken from several crime scenes.

The killer apparently lured his victims to the sugarcane fields fields of Mount Edgecombe, near Phoenix, by offering them employment. Thwala fitted the profile compiled by police forensic psychologist Micky Pistorius, who described him as "intelligent and charming to women, but extremely dangerous". Thwala speaks English, Afrikaans and Zulu and grew up as a laborer in the cane fields where he sold cane to local residents.

His mother, Khathazile Ntanzi, described Twala as an intelligent man who could read and write even though he never received schooling beyond Grade 1. "He was a normal child, a gentleman and helpful around the house. He also bought us groceries when he had money. We are relieved he has been sent to jail. Who knows? He may have turned against us one day," said his sister, Zibekile.

On March 31, 1999, a Dunbar judge sentenced Twala to 506 years in prison after he was found guilty of 16 slayings and other charges. Twala, 31, showed no remorse for his crimes. He was also found guilty of one charge of attempted murder, seven of indecent assault and three of rape.

Shortly before his sentencing, a rumour spread around Inanda that Thwala had been seen at his family's home. An angry mob converged on the house, setting it alight after locking his mother, Khathazile 65, and his sister Zibekile, 41, inside as they prepared to go to church. A neighbor came to their rescue, dragging them from the blazing dwelling. Fearing for their lives, the family fled to the police station with Zibekile's six-month-old son, Mthandeni, and her daughters Fikile, 2, Ntombizakhona, 7, and Phumelele, 8.

Both Thwala's mother and sister said that they believed he "got what was coming to him" when Judge Vivienne Niles-Duner imposed the 506-year sentence on him. At the time of his reign of terror, neither Thwala's mother nor his sister suspected that he was the killer. "He never changed his behaviour. He would even occasionally condemn the killings and said he hoped the killer would be caught soon," said his mother.

Vadim Yershov (19) On June 10, 1998, Red Army army deserter Vadim Yershov fainted when he was sentenced to death for raping, robbing and stabbing 19 people. Yershov, 25, was sentenced by a military tribunal in the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk. Fortunately for him Russia has suspended executing its convicts even though the death sentence is still part of the legal code. The Council of Europe urged Russia to abolish capital punishment as a condition for its membership in the organization.

Gerd Wenzinger (19) On June 16, 1997 Gerd Wenzinger -- the German torture doctor accused of murdering and torturing up to 19 women in Brazil and Germany -- hanged himself in his jail cell in Brazil after a court approved his extradition back to Germany.

Wenzinger, 53, was accused of killing 13 women in Germany and four more in Brazil. On June 12 Brazil's Supreme Court approved his extradition which led to his death by hanging four days later. Wenzinger first attempted to kill himself after learning that German police had found a videotape showing him cutting a woman into small pieces.

Sergei Ryakhovsky (19) Sergei, a necrophilic killer known as "The Hippopotamus" because of his size, is believed to have slain up to 19 people in the suburbs of Moscow. Six more survived his attacks. In July, 1995 he was sentenced to death for his crimes

"I will be back," Ryakhovsky said after being sentenced. Local television reported that the killer intended to file an appeal. Ryakhovsky, 32, thick-necked, heavy-handed and pasty-faced, earned his nickname because he is almost six feet six inches tall and weight of 280 pounds. When the trial started in April, the prosecution accused him of killing 19 men and women aged between 14 and 78 up to his arrest in April 1993. Allegedly Ryakhovsky carried out necrophilic acts on his victims and stole their belongings.

In true Eastern European serial killer fashion Sergei first confessed to most of the charges, but later admitted only three murder attempts on elderly women -- despite the fact that he had led investigators to the naked and headless body of a young boy he killed. One of the more bizarre cases outlined by the prosecution was in January 1993, when they say Ryakhovsky killed a 78-year-old man, cut off his head with his hunting knife and returned a day later to saw off his leg. In another act of lethal bizarreness, in March of that year he strangled a woman, committed necrophilia, and blew her up with a bomb he put inside her.

Larry Eyler (19) A homosexual killer struggling with life in the closet. Larry took satisfaction wherever he could and then disposed of the evidence. At one point, as the police investigated him, he sued them for half a million dollars for "psychological warfare". At his first trial the evidence against him was found inadmissible and Eyler walked out on bail to carry on with his deadly forays. Eventually, his arrogance led to his undoing when he dumped the dismembered body of a male hustler in his garbage. His handiwork got him the death penalty.

Larry died of AIDS in prison on March 6, 1994, shortly after a failed attempt to swap more confessions for a commutation of his Illinois death sentence. His alleged accomplice Robert Little is still a free man, though the college where he taught library science eased him out after the murder trial. Eyler's former attorney was supposedly cooperating with families of the various victims on a wrongful death lawsuit against some unnamed accomplice, but nothing has come of it.

Paul John Knowles (18+) In 1974, after being released from jail, Knowles was rejected by a woman he met through an astrology magazine. That sent him on a one-night, three-body killing spree. He soon left town , leaving a trail of corpses on his wake. He would choose his victims randomly, entering their homes at gun point. He strangled his prey and stole their credit cards. Sometimes he would try to rape his victims, but usually his sword would go blunt before completing the deed. Using a stolen cassette recorder, he left a taped confession of fourteen murders with his lawyer and disappeared. He continued on with his deadly ways and eventually was hunted down by an FBI agent who shot him dead in Georgia.

Christopher Mhlengwa Zikode (18) Known as the "Donnybrook Serial Killer," Zikode murdered 18 people and attempted to murder another 11 over a period of two years in the rural Natal midlands town of Donnybrook in South Africa. All his victims were between 20 and 30. His modus operandi was to kick open the door of his victims' house, shoot the men in the head and drag the women to nearby plantations, where he would rape them repeatedly - sometimes for as long as five hours - and kill them. If they resisted he would shoot them first and commit necrophilia. Sometimes he would attack women from behind in footpaths in the area. Mhlengwa, 21 was arrested on September 29, 1995 and is presently awaiting trial.

On January 7, 1997, a High Court judge sentenced 23-year-old Zikode (23) to 140 years in prison, including five life sentences for a six-month rape and murder rampage. In the understament of the year the judge said during sentencing that Zikode had absolutely no regard for human life and his attitude to women was "contemptible," and found it unnecessary to review the "gory details" of the case. Zikode was convicted on 21 charges, including eight murders, five rapes, five attempted murders and one indecent assault, between April and September 1995.

The judge noted "with dismay" that Zikode was arrested for the first time in July 1995 for the attempted murder of Beauty Zulu. While on bail he committed five more offences - two attempted murders, housebreaking with intent to rape, murder and rape. He was eventually successfully convicted with the help of South Africa's star profiler, Dr. Micki Pistorious.

Joel Rifkin (17+) Joel Rifkin of East Meadow, New York, killed at least seventeen women, mostly prostitutes in the NY area. He was caught while driving a pickup with no license plates and a three-day old corpse sitting next to him. Rifkin was sentenced to 203 2/3 years to life is Attica, a complex of brick, red tile-roofed buildings clustered behind a 30-foot, concrete wall in the green hills east of Buffalo. He is confined to his cell 23 hours a day for his own protection.

In a jailhouse interview in 1999, Rifkin pondered on what made him kill all those women. "I still don't understand why," he said, noting he patronized hundreds of prostitutes for years before he started killing them. "There were nights I'd be with more than one girl. One girl would walk away fine; the other would end up dead. I don't know why.

In a susprising turn, for the last five years in jail Rifkin, New York State's most prolific serial killer, has been working on plans to build a shelter for prostitutes with counseling, drug treatment, medical help, and job training. The proposal for "Oholah House" -- named for a biblical prostitute killed by her clients -- has kept Rifkin busy in his windowless cell at Attica Correctional Facility for the past four years. It is his way of making amends for the 17 murders he admits he commited.

"My view of what I did -- you can't pardon it," Rifkin said. "I don't see forgiveness coming my way. It's a way of paying back a debt, I guess. Sitting here until I die or get murdered is not paying a debt."

"It's obviously well thought out," said Sidney-Anne Ford, executive director of the You Are Never Alone Project, a nonresidential treatment center for prostitutes in Baltimore. "This is a great thing he's working on. It's a pretty compassionate model for service."

According to Fred Klein, chief of the major offense bureau for the Nassau district attorney's office, "Joel's a very bright person. He's trying to help people, and I don't see why people shouldn't listen. If he's come to the conclusion that he wants to use his brain and help people, that's good. Maybe he hopes some day that people will see there's another side of Joel Rifkin." Who would have thought Rifkin to have a kind and decent side to his barbarous personality? "He's a very thoughtful -- at times, sensitive -- person," Klein said. "There's something very different about him ... He just has that one flaw."

"A lot of the feelings you get with girls is total worthlessness," Rifkin said. "They see themselves as being incapable of being loved. Their only experiences with men are abusive." Oholah House would give women the tools and the confidence they need to leave behind a lifetime of prostitution, Rifkin said. Residence in the house, which would last 18 to 24 months, should be voluntary for it to be effective, he said. Only women dedicated to changing their lives will be able to do it, he said.

Residents would get help from many sources to help them make that change. There would be psychological counseling, job training, substance abuse treatment, medical care, parenting skills training, money management classes -- all standard services for helping people get their lives in order. In instances where women still have supportive families -- a rarity among prostitutes -- he said family members should be invited to "reunions" as a way to re-establish connections.

Residents of Oholah House would be encouraged to form a "sisterhood" in the same way members of Alcoholics Anonymous have sponsors within the group to look out for each other. Rifkin suggested former residents should be encouraged to return to the house, whether they need more help themselves or to offer support to current residents.

(Oholah House information courtesy of Andrew Smith, Newsday

Leszek Pekalski (17+) Accused of killing 17 women from 1984 to 1992, Leszek was convicted of one murder but cleared of more than a dozen others. After an eight-month trial the Provincial Court in the northern city of Slupsk, Poland, sentenced Leszek to 25 years in a psychiatric institute. The court said there was insufficient evidence to convict him of the other killings. Leszek, when he was first arrested, admitted to killing more than 80 people. Later he said the police had forced the confession out of him.

"I'm a gullible man, and I was easily persuaded by what the officers had told me," Pekalski told the judge. "I'm mentally weak, and if somebody pushes me, I break down. Then I admit to things I have never done. I have never killed anyone. I'm so scared. The prosecutor threatened that the victims' families or the public would kill me if I'm acquitted or get a mild sentence. He yelled at me and told me to confess everything."

Like in the O.J. Simpson trial, DNA tests of hair strands were to be crucial pieces of evidence implicating the defendant. Sadly the prosecutor's hopes proved futile when Doctor Ryszard Pawelski from the Gdansk Medical Academy's forensic medicine institute examined the evidence and declared that the cops had clumsily handled the hair strands and damaged their evidential value.

According to police Pekalski confessed to details of the crimes no one else could've known about. "We couldn't find his trail for a long time. He never followed a regular pattern; there was no typical victim or a repeated killing method. He would hit with a wooden cane or would strangle his victim with a belt."

Like other lust killers, the Pekalski was diagnosed with having an abnormal sex drive. When he was first incarcerated in 1992 he asked the warden's permission to let him keep a rubber sex-shop doll in his detention cell. Poor lonely Leszek wasn't allowed to get the sex-doll. He has appealed to the government's Citizen Rights representative, and is awaiting the decision. Sources say he has put on a lot of weight in jail, and is hopeful to soon "find a girl," in the flesh or made out of rubber.

Donato Bilancia (17) On May 15, 1998, Donato Bilancia, confessed to a string of slayings in the Italian Riviera, saying he was mentally ill, suddenly flipped and could not explain his 90-day long serial killing spree.

Bilancia spent seven hours through the night smoking and confessing to the magistrate in charge of his case to the tune of 18 murders, 15 of them since October. "He expressly asked for treatment because he is not able to realise what he has done. He cannot explain to himself what happened: something suddenly went off in him," the lawyer said. The confessed killer, who was arrested May 6, added that he had acted alone and on his own initiative.

Prosecutors in Genoa said they now have evidence linking a Donato Bilancia to the killing of two women on trains around the Italina Riviera. Sources close to investigation confirmed that prosecutors had found gunpowder on the clothes of the two women shot dead in the toilets of trains to the crime scenes of the six murdered prostitutes.

Police said Bilancia was also under investigation for the murder of a money-changer near Ventimiglia on the French border in March and of a gas station attendant killed on the highway between Ventimiglia and the Mediterranean port city of Genoa in April. They have also reopened the case of a October 1997 shooting of a newlywed couple in their apartment in Genoa.

A second official arrest warrant was issued for Bilancia in connection with the murder of two security guards shot dead last year when they went to the aid of a transvestite being attacked. The transvestite, called Julio Castro and known as "Lorena," pointed out Bilancia as the alleged assailant in an police lineup. Police revealed that one of the train murders took place on the same Genoa-Ventimiglia line where Bilancia's brother, Michele, threw himself and his small son into the path of an oncoming train 11 years ago.

Bilancia, whose Genoa apartment was found to contain porn videos, syringes, and a statue of a phallus, said he bought a .38 Smith & Wesson revolver last year with 50 bullets and, "after firing a few practice rounds", set about killing a string of people after he was betrayed by people he knew in the local gambling world. In a lurid 14-page confession, the feared Riviera Serial Killer calmly recounted in detail how he had killed a gas station attendant, two goldsmiths, two bureau de change operators, two women in train lavatories, three security guards, four prostitutes, an underworld gambling figure and his wife, and a fellow gambler.

He started his murderous rampage with the killings of the underworld gambling figure Maurizio Parenti and his wife Carla. Next came the fellow gambler, Giorgio Cenentaro, who he strangled with adhesive tape. Donato said he murdered a prostitute "for each nationality" that worked his city's streets. His penultimate murder victim was Elisabotta Zoppetti, a 32-year-old nurse from Milan, who was returning home on a high-speed train from a weekend on the Riviera.

"I got on the train at Genoa. In first class there was a woman," said Bilancia. "I didn't know her. I waited until she went to the lavatory, taking her bag with her. I opened the door with a false key. She screamed. I put her jacket over her head and fired. I had got on with the intention to kill. The victim had to be a woman, even if I never touched her." His last victim, Maria Angela Rubina, 32, also died in the bathroom of a train. "I did it like the other one," he told police. "Very quickly."

On April 12, 2000, Donato Bilancia, 49, was sentenced by a Genoa court to 13 tlife sentences. Bilancia, a compulsive gambler, confessed to slaying 17 people in a six-month killing spree on the Italian Riviera.

Robert Hansen (17) A model father and a hard-working baker, Bob turned out to be the most active serial killer in Alaskan history. From 1973 to 1983, this expert pilot and avid hunter would fly hookers and topless dancers to his remote cabin hideaway in the Alaskan wilderness for rape and murder. After repeatedly sexually abusing his hapless victims he would set them free in the freezing woods and hunt them down with his high-powered hunting rifle.

Bobby had a long police record starting in Iowa as a teen arsonist. While living in Alaska he had several run-ins with the law involving larceny, assault with a deadly weapon, rape and kidnapping. However, he managed to get away with serving hardly any time for his crimes and lived a normal life as a married man and a hard working and respected member of the community. Authorities first suspected Bob of being a serial killer when a lucky prostitute dashed naked from his plane to escape certain death. While investigating the incident they discovered several other "women of the night" who had similar experiences with him. Soon Anchorage police started piecing together a picture of their prominent baker as a manic-depressive arsonist, kleptomaniac, rapist and possible serial killer.

When authorities first searched his home they found 30 hidden weapons as well as mementos and maps marking the location of the graves of his victims. Eventually Bob confessed to 17 killings which he referred to as his "summertime project." Profoundly moral, Bob hoped to forcefully teach his prey a lesson for their whoring and stripping ways. Under heavy guard Hansen was flown by helicopter to the Knik River in the Alaskan wilderness where he pinpointed with great accuracy the location of several graves. In 1984 Bob was handed a sentence of life plus 461 years which he is now serving in Spring Creek Correction Facility in Seward, Alaska. . There he hopes to "become a writer." Eventually, he says, "I'll write my own story." Two publishing houses have already offered him a contract.

Jeffrey Dahmer (17) The founding father of Cannibals Anonymous. As a kid, Jeff liked to torture and kill little animals. As an adult he did the same with humans. This Milwaukee chocolate factory worker lured gay, black men to his apartment with the promise of sex and drugs and instead killed them and had them for dinner.

Once his victims were dead, Jeff came to life. He enjoyed sex with corpses and was conscientious enough to always wear a condom. Sex with live beings was not as good, he said, because they could get up and leave at any minute. He also enjoyed mutilation and experimented with different ways of disposing of his victims. He once tried to turn one of his victims into a zombie by performing a homemade lobotomy on the man by drilling into his brain and pouring acid into the holes.

When captured, police found three dissolving bodies in 55-gallon acid vats in his bedroom. They also found four severed heads, seven skulls, skeletons in his closet and a penis in a lobster pot. Curiously, he had no food in the fridge, only condiments. In the freezer he had a heart stashed "to eat later." Although he enjoyed munching his loved ones, at the time of his arrest he was rail thin. In jail authorities managed to fatten him up. Jeff met his end when he was viciously attacked by Christopher Scarver, a convicted killer on antispychotic medication, while mopping the bathroom floor in maximum security. The lethargic cannibal died with a mop handle sticking out of his eye socket. At his mother's request, his brain was preserved in formaldehyde for future study.

A year after his death his parents began battling over the killer's preserved brain. On December 12, 1995, this absurdist saga came to an end when a judge ruled in favor of his father who wanted to honor his son's request of being cremated. The last chapter of the Dahmer postmortem involved his personal belongings. A lawyer representing the families of some of his victims planned to auction Dahmer's possessions to raise money for his clients. The city of Milwaukee was outraged by the idea. As of May 29, 1996, Thomas Jacobson, the lawyer representing eight of the 11 families announced that Jeff's estate would be going to the incinerator instead of the auction block after a civic group, fearing bad publicity for their fair city, pledged to pay $407,225 for the famed cannibal's household items.

Eddie Lee Moseley (16+) Prosecutors in Fort Lauredale, Florida, said they would ask a judge to dismiss four murder convictions against a man who has served 21 years for pleading guilty to six killings and a rape, after DNA tests proved he did not commit two of the murders. Broward County prosecutors cleared 49-year-old Jerry Frank Townsend of four of the murders because they said the DNA results found no credible evidence to support his confessions. The tests for the two murders found DNA from another man, Eddie Lee Mosley, the Broward County Sheriff's Office said. Mosley, now 52, has been in state psychiatric hospitals since 1988, when he was found incompetent to stand trial for the murders of two Broward women.

Townsend will remain in prison for two other murders and a rape he confessed to committing in Miami-Dade County, but prosecutors there said they were investigating whether the convictions should stand. Dennis Urbano, one of the attorneys who represented Townsend in the Miami-Dade cases, said it would be unfair to keep his client locked up because his confessions cannot be trusted. According to the attorney Townsend was mentally retarded and confessed to any crime police mentioned because he wanted to please them. Urbano said he experimented with Townsend at the jail and could get him to confess to anything.

On June June 15, 2001, Townsend was freed after DNA evidence indicated he didn't commit any of the killings he confessed to having committed. "It is abundantly clear that he is the victim of an enormous tragedy," said Judge Scott Silverman.

In 1979, Townsend, 49, was convicted of two murders and pleaded guilty to four others after confessing to the six killings. But his confession was thrown in doubt when DNA evidence in two of the murders cleared him and pointed at Mosley as the killer.

Police said Townsend, whose IQ is between 50 and 60 and has the mental capacity of an 8-year-old, admitted to crimes he did not commit to please detectives. "He liked the cops, he wanted to be with the cops. They were his buddies and frankly that's a great tool if you get suspects to like you -- that's a good thing," Miami Assistant Police Chief James Chambliss said. "He was trying to be helpful to them. That's where the problem came up."

Townsend was originally arrested and charged with raping a pregnant woman in daylight on a downtown Miami street. The victim and witnesses pointed him out to police a few blocks away. During the investigation, Townsend confessed to several other slayings and was taken to murder scenes in Broward County.

On September 1, 2001, Fort Lauderdale police announced DNA evidence had linked Mosley to the death of an eighth woman slain in 1984. Mosley, who has been involuntarily committed to psychiatric institutions since 1988, was genetically linked to the rape and murder of 29-year-old Loretta Young Brown. Previous DNA tests have linked Mosley to the seven other deaths -- Emma Cook, 54; Teresa Giles, 22; Sonja Marion, 13; Vetta Turner, 34; Shandra Whitehead, 8; Terry Jean Cummings, 21, Naomi Gamble, 15. Mosley has not been charged with any of the killings because he has been found incompetent to stand trial in two of the murders. Prosecutors began testing Mosley's DNA against several South Florida murders after tests linked him to the 1985 slaying of 8-year-old Shandra Whitehead. He is suspected of slaying up to 16 women and young girls in the Fort Lauderdale area between 1973 and 1987.

November 17, 2001: According to a court-appointed psychologist, Mosley is incompetent to stand trial for those crimes because he is mentally retarded. Mosley was evaluated in the state psychiatric hospital in Chattahoochee, where he is confined. "It is the opinion of this examiner that Mr. Mosley is incompetent to proceed," psychologist Trudy Block-Garfield wrote in the competency evaluation report. She added Mosley does not have a rational understanding of the murder and rape charges against him, does not understand what the death penalty means, did not understand the role of his lawyer or the prosecutor and would not be able to give reasonable and relevant testimony.

Block-Garfield wrote that Mosley functions somewhere in the range of a 51/2-year-old and an 11-year-old, with the verbal ability of a 7-year-old, and that over the years his IQ has tested in the high 40s to the low 60s. "In virtually all testing, he scored in the mentally retarded range," she wrote. "There is no real indication that Mr. Mosley is psychotic, and it is questionable that he ever was psychotic."

Fort Lauderdale homicide detective John Curcio has maintained that Mosley was putting on an act in his interviews with psychologists through the years.

Douglas Edward Gretzler & Willie Luther Steelman (16+) On June 4, 1998, rampager Douglas Edward Gretzler -- who had been on death row since November 15, 1976 -- was executed by lethal injection for two murders in Arizona's first daytime execution. Gretzler, 47, who along with mental hospital escapee Willie Luther Steelman, confessed to killing 17 people during a week long rampage through Arizona and northern California. Asked if he had any last words, Gretzler turned his head toward the 35 witnesses behind the glass and said: "From the bottom of my soul, I'm so deeply sorry and have been for years for murdering Michael and Patricia Sandberg.... Though I am being executed for that crime, I apologize to all 17 victims and their families."

Gretzler and Steelman were convicted in the November 3, 1973, slayings of Marine Capt. Michael Sandberg and his wife, Patricia, at their Tucson condominium. Yhe lethal duo spotted Sandberg washing his car in a parking lot and forced him into his home, where his 32-year-old wife, a University of Arizona graduate student, was studying.

The couple was hog-tied -- one on a bed, the other on the living-room couch -- for several hours while Gretzler and Steelman ate their food. At sundown, they shot them several times in the head, stole their car, cash and credit cars and headed to northern California.

On November 6, Gretzler and Steelman robbed grocery store owner Walter Parkin of $4,000 in cash and checks and killed all nine people inside Parkin's home outside Victor, California. Among the victims were a 9-year-old boy and 11-year-old girl, both shot in the head as they cowered in bed under the sheets.

The killers were arrested two days later in Sacramento where they confessed to six additional killings. Among their possessions was "In Cold Blood," Truman Capote's book about a Kansas murder case.

Jose Antonio Rodriguez Vega (16+) Spains's most prolific killer, Jose Antonio killed at least 16 old widows in and around Santander, a coastal city in Northern Spain. A bricklayer by trade, Vera conned his way into the houses of old ladies under the pretext of doing a job for them. Once inside the killer would be "overcome by excitement" and would jump his geriatric victims.

Usually Vega would strangle them, take off their panties, fondle their genitalia, and/or rape them post mortem using brooms and other objects. Though each attack was sexually driven, no semen was found in the victims because the killer was impotent.

A fastidiously neat individual , Jose Antonio hardly left a trace of his crimes at the scene. Authorities had not even classified his first three victims as homicides until he was arrested. Jose Antonio left each of the dead ladies cozily tucked in their beds convincing many that the poor women died of old age. His crime spree started in 1986 --after serving part of a 27-year sentence for rape -- and ended with his arrest in 1988.

A cold-hearted and calculating serial killer, Vega enjoyed taking home "trophies" from each of his kills. In his burgundy draped, one-room apartment which he shared with a woman, he created a lavish altar dedicated to his fetishistic collection of mementos from each of his crimes. The extent of his killing spree was discovered when authorities broadcasted a video of Vega's home showing his collection of fetishes. Many viewers recognized several objects linking Vega to their dead relatives.

During his trial in 1991, he enjoyed the constant harassment from the public who wanted to lynch him for his crimes. Always impeccably dressed, Vega received a sentence of 440 years, which in real time in the Spanish judicial system translates to no more than 20 years. By 2008, when the accused killer turns 51, he will be free again and, most probably, will continue killing.

On October 25, 2002, the granny killer was stabbed to death by two fellow prisoners in the courtyard of Topas jail in western Salamanca province. By law, Vega, who was 44 at the time of his death, could only serve a maximum of 30 years in jail. The granny killer was due to be released in 2008.

Richard Ramirez (16+) A Los Angeles transient known as the Night Stalker, Rich was captured in Boyle Heights, a Latino neighborhood, by an angry mob after he attempted a carjacking. His good looks made him a crowd favorite. His Metalhead-gone-Satanist image made him a cult figure. Like Manson, he is an unrepentant photo-opportunity-type killer with a bevy of female followers.

He enjoyed breaking into houses and calmly killing, raping and partying all night long. He would smoke big, fat joints of sinsemilla as he strolled around his victim's homes playing his AC/DC tapes, spraying satanic slogans on the wall and raiding the fridge.

Some have tried to explain his Satanicness to the toxic and radioactive poisoning of his genes before his birth. It is documented that both of his parents were exposed to Atomic Radiation Poisoning in Mexico. Then, after they immigrated to the U.S.A., his mother worked mixing toxic chemicals for a long time. She collapsed at work when five months pregnant with Richard. She didn't return to work until after his birth.

During his trial he tattooed a pentagram on the palm of his hand which he flashed it at the press cameras. After being sentenced to death he said: "You don't understand me. You are not expected to. You are not capable of it. I am beyond your experience. I am beyond good and evil. I don't believe in the hypocritical, moralistic dogma of this so-called civilized society. I need not look beyond this courtroom to see all the liars, the haters, the killers, the crooks, the paranoid cowards -- truly trematodes of the Earth, each one in his own legal profession. You maggots make me sick! Hypocrites one and all. We are all expendable for a cause. No one knows that better than those who kill for policy, clandestinely or openly, as do the governments of the world which kill in the name of god and country. I don't need to hear all of society's rationalizations. I've heard them all before and the fact remains that what is, is. Legions of the night--night breed-- repeat not the errors of the Night Prowler and show no mercy. I will be avenged." Then, as he was lead out of court, he exclaimed "No big deal, death comes with the territory. See you in Disneyland!"

While in jail he fixed his teeth and married one of his groupies. On October 3, 1996, Doreen Lioy, 41, married Richie in a simple and tasteful ceremony in San Quentin's waiting room. Lioy is a free-lance editor who works part-time for teen magazines, lives in a houseboat, has bachelor's degree in English literature, is said to have an IQ of 152, and is supposedly still a virgin. Doreen was first attracted to Rich in 1985 when she saw a picture of him in the paper wearing a bandage A truly devoted lover, she wrote 75 letters to him before she was allowed to visit him. The couple got engage in 1988, but prison regulations delayed the wedding until 1996.

Randy Kraft (16+) Another in the tradition of California freeway killer. Randy, a graduate of the prestigious Claremont Men's College, liked to pick up young men, especially marines, drug them and strangle them. On May 14, 1983, a highway patrolman stopped Kraft in Mission Viejo for suspected drunk driving and noticed the dead marine sitting next to him. In the car, police also found pictures of several other victims, and a so-called death list with the victims' addresses and other incriminating items.

Prosecutors suspect Kraft killed as many as 45 young men in Southern California, Oregon and Michigan. A soft-spoken former computer programmer, he targeted hitchhikers between 18 and 25 years old. Many were sexually tortured before being strangled with their own belts. One victim's eyes had been burned with a cigarette lighter. Another man's head was found in the waters off the Long Beach Marina. Authorities believe he strangled his victims after drugging and sexually assaulting them, spawning Orange County's longest and costliest murder case.

After a 13-month trial, jurors deliberated two days before sentencing Kraft to death. The trial court judge upheld the penalty, saying the killings and mutilations were beyond comprehension. "I can't imagine doing these things in scientific experiments on a dead person, much less [to] someone alive," said Superior Court Judge Donald A. McCartin at the time.Randy was known as the "Score-Card Killer," because he kept a coded notebook with a tally of all his kills. Police linked him to sixty-two deaths spanning three states, but only sixteen have been proven conclusively.

Before sentencing, Kraft strongly maintained his innocence. "I have not murdered anyone, and I believe a reasonable review of the record will show that," he told the judge. In his appeal, Kraft argued that his original trial was riddled with more than 20 legal errors. His most serious charge claimed the judge erred in allowing prosecutors to use as evidence the "death list." His attorneys alleged that the list--a sheet of paper bearing 61 cryptic entries that prosecutors called a "score card" of victims--improperly prejudiced the jury against him. But the Supreme Court disagreed, saying the list was relevant to the case.

On August 11, 2000, the California Supreme Court upheld his death sentence in what officials described as an important advance in the effort to execute the notorious serial killer. The justices unanimously rejected Kraft's claims that he received an unfair trial, saying he should die for the decade-long murder spree.

Herb Baumeister (16) Tally one for the family-man-by-day-gay-killer-by-night file. Herb Baumeister was the embodiment of the American dream. He built from scratch a chain of successful local thrift stores in Indianapolis and led a seemingly normal life as a husband and a devoted father of three. However, when police uncovered the remains of seven young gay men in the woods of Fox Hollow Farm -- the family's $1 million estate in the exclusive Indianapolis suburb of Westfield -- Herb's American dream was more like a murderous nightmare.

In fact, Herb's wife of 20 years -- Julie -- had no idea of what Herb was all about. Every summer, while she and the kids went to Herb's mom's lakeside condo, he stayed behind "to work." A big fan of autoerotic asphyxia, Herb is suspected in as many as a dozen unsolved gay murders along the Indiana Interstate, and another dozen young gay men killed in Ohio and Indiana.

In June, 1996, while Herb was at the condo, officers found hundreds of bones -- adding up to the remains of seven people -- in the woods behind his estate. All the victims frequented the same bars that Baumeister did, and all went missing on days when his wife and kids were away. Not one to face the music, Herb took off to Canada where he committed suicide

For Julie Baumeister the shock was monstrous. The man she thought was a hard-working and devoted father -- the man she shared her bed with for 20 years -- was clearly one of Indiana's most prolific serial killers.

In May 1993 gay men began disappearing to the tune of 10 over two years. Police scoured gay Indianapolis for clues. In the fall of 1994, a man told them of a strange tryst he had with someone named Brian: They had gone to Brian's sprawling estate and engaged in autoerotic axphixiation. A year later the man spotted Brian again and, aware of the rash of disappearances, took down his license-plate number. As it turned out, Brian was Herb.

November of that year -- though lacking sufficient evidence for a search warrant -- detectives showed up at Fox Hollow Farm asking to search the estate. When Herb refused, they went to work on Julie. They told her about Herb's cruising and that they suspected him of being a serial killer. She refused to believe them. "The police came to me and said, 'We are investigating your husband in relation to homosexual homicide. I remember saying to them, 'Can you tell me what homosexual homicide is?'"

Five months later they approached her again. Remembering a skull and a cluster of bones her 13-year-old son had found in the woods outside the house which her husband casually dismissed as an old skeleton his father kept, she became more suspicious of her now estranged husband. Finally, with Herb gone for some R & R at the lakeside condo, she allowed police to inspect the property. As the search began, the 49-year-old Baumeister disappeared. Eight days later, on July 3, 1996, campers discovered his body lying beside his car in Ontario's Pinery Provincial Park, with a bullet hole from the business end of a .357 Magnum in his forehead.

On April 28, 1998, investigators concluded that Herb probably killed 16 men in all after linking him to nine other men whose bodies were found dumped along rural roads in Indiana and Ohio between 1980 and 1990.

Dr, Harold Shipman (15-300) Manchester Family practitioner Harold Shipman has become the focus of Europe's biggest murder investigation: he is suspected of killing more than 116 patients over 14 years. Dr. Death -- as he is known by British media -- was linked to 77 killings after police charged him with six murders and started investigating other suspicious deaths surrounding his medical practice.

As of now nine bodies have been exhumed. Police are checking the bodies for lethal dosages of drugs. To avoid publicity and crowds, police have been performing the exhumations at night, witnessed by a priest. All the exhumations have recovered the remains of female patients ranging in age from 49 to 81. In 49 of the cases, Dr Shipman's patients opted for cremation, forcing investigators to make deductions from the patients' medical records and from their families' evidence.

The investigation into Dr Shipman's practice began after relatives of Kathleen Grundy, 81, a former mayoress and respected charity worker from Hyde, near Manchester, discovered that she had left nothing in her will to her two sons and her daughter. Dr Shipman is charged with falsely obtaining cash and possessions worth the equivalent of R3,2-million from Mrs Grundy's estate.

London Police exhumed a sixth bodyin the case of a doctor suspected of killing up to 28 of his patients for their money. Dr Harold Shipman has already been charged with killing four patients and forging the will of one, a former mayoress in his hometown of Hyde, near Manchester.

Police said after Shipman,52, was charged with the first murder that he may have claimed another 27 victims, all former patients. The bearded, grey-haired doctor wept when he appeared again in court and charged with three more murders.

A spokesperson for Greater Manchester police said the body of Marie Quinn (67), who died in November last year, was exhumed yesterday and a new postmortem would be carried out. She would not confirm reports that police expected to exhume yet another body in the next few days on the Mediterranean island of Malta.

Shipman had provided death certificates giving plausible causes of death for his alleged victims, most of whom were elderly. He had practised as a family doctor in Hyde for more than 20 years and police are now reported to be investigating up to 3 000 prescriptions that he wrote.

"He is the dullest serial killer I have ever met," a spokesman for the Greater Manchester Police said. "He certainly doesn't act like a murderer." This is the sentiment echoed by almost everyone who has come into contact with Harold Shipman, the quiet, unassuming, solicitous doctor who stands accused of being one of Britain's most prolific killers of modern times.

Dr Shipman was charged with another seven murders of his patients, bringing the total to 15. It is reported that a total of 150 cases are being investigated, although the Greater Manchester Police remain tight-lipped, rigidly enforcing subjudice laws. They refused to "enter into speculation about more charges or whether a line will be drawn here". All of the deaths were sudden. All of these vulnerable elderly women died within an hour of a house call from their doctor, who was convicted of administering them fatal injections of diamorphine, the medical name for heroin. After their deaths the good doctor fabricated the cause of death on the death certificates.

Statistics expert Professor Richard Baker believes British doctor Harold Shipman may have killed between 200 to 300 of his patients. A report authored by Professor Liam Donaldson, Chief Medical Officer for England and Wales,

Everything points to the fact that a doctor with the sinister and macabre motivation of Harold Shipman is a once in a lifetime occurrence compared the pattern of deaths at both his former practice in Hyde, Greater Manchester, and his first practice in Todmorden, Yorkshire, with other similar practices showing that there were 345 extra deaths when Shipman's records were compared with normal practice at similar surgeries.

However, more detailed analysis of the circumstances surrounding each death means that the probable figure is 236 - as these were the patients who died at home. Researchers at the University of Leicester, took into account factors such as time of death, and whether relatives or Dr Shipman himself were present. For example, many of Shipman's patients appear to have died in the afternoon, which is also unusual.

Professor Baker told the BBC: "I am only presenting circumstantial evidence - this was not a forensic investigation. There were a lot of cases about which there was a reason for concern."

After reviewing all the evidence and his own records, the police and other investigating authorities said they suspected he had killed as many as 192. The latest research looked at the years 1974 to 1998, to calculate the number of what the study termed "excess deaths". Between 1985 and 1998, Professor Baker's analysis suggested that more than half of 288 documented deaths under Shipman's care were "highly suspicious". Another 14% were "moderately suspicious", he said.

Earl Frederick (16) A suspected serial killer in the Oklahoma County Jail, Earl won an appeal from death row at McAlester, Oklahoma. A former policeman, Earl is suspected of at least 16 murders.

Dennis Nilsen (14) The British Jeffrey Dahmer. This alcoholic homosexual could not come to grips with life in the closet and resorted to murder and necrophilia. He would lure young homeless men to his apartment, render them unconscious with liquor and strangle them to death to the sound of the LSO's 'Classic Rock' recordings. He liked to stash their bodies under the floor boards and in cupboards. Occasionally he would take one out, bathe and dress it, and pretend to have a date. He would lay the corpse next to him in bed and masturbate. Then, return it to the floor boards. Like Dahmer, he killed out of loneliness. He enjoyed small talk with his friends the cadavers. He kept an assortment of body parts around the house as company and sometimes even left them in plain view when he went out to work.

Nilsen killed at least 14 men over 4 years, and destroyed their bodies in a series of large bonfires in his garden. However, when he was forced to move to a new apartment with no garden he had to improvise new ways to dispose of "his friends." In 1983 he was discovered when he tried to flush human remains down the toilet, and clogged the plumbing. The neighbours complained about the blocked drains, and caught him trying to clear them at midnight. When the Police searched his top floor apartment, they discovered body parts of 3 men, who Nilsen had dismembered using his army butchery skills.

According to his mom, Dennis Nilsen allegedly was prompted to murder because he thought he was sending his victims to a "better place". In an interview for television Mommy Nilsen said he was confused after attending his grandfather's funeral aged five. He was told: "Grandad has gone to a much better place."

In an email, a reader of the Archives challenged our assumption of Nilsen's alcoholism and sexual orientation: "I would like to clear up a few inaccuracies in your description of Dennis Nilsens' crimes. Nilsen often consumed large amounts of alcohol before killing but when on remand in Brixton prison it was found that he did not have any sort of alcohol dependency - he was not an alcoholic. You also describe Nilsen as homosexual when in fact he describes himself as Bisexual having had sexual intercourse with a woman twice - once in Germany with a prostitute and also with a Swiss au pair when living in London."

Elias Xitavhudzi (16) The second in a long tradition of serial slayers in the township of Atteridgeville, South Africa. In the 1960s Elias Xitavhudzi, known as "Pangaman", murdered 16 white women and dumped their bodies around Atteridgeville.

William Burke & William Hare (16) Possibly two of Scotland's most gruesome imports were the serial killers William Burke and William Hare. Burke and Hare hailed from Ulster and moved to Scotland to work as labourers on the Union Canal. Ever aware of needs of the market, Burke and Hare set themselves up as procurers of human bodies to satisfy the demand of Edinburgh's medical schools.

Originally the two would dig up the graves of the recently departed in the dead of night, steal the body and then sell it for cash to a doctor for use during anatomy demonstrations. Tired of digging, the two entrepreneurs started murdering people in Edinburgh's old town and selling their cadavers on an "ask no questions basis." They killed their victims by strangling them using a method they had perfected which left no obvious trace of foul play and little evidence of the murder.

The murder of their 16th victim led to their arrest. Burke's mistress and Hare's wife were also arrested. Because the courts had little evidence to prosecute them successfully, the Lord Advocate, Sir William Rae, offered Hare immunity from prosecution if he would turn King's evidence. The evidence Hare and his wife provided sent Burke to his death on the gallows on 28 January, 1829 while his mistress Helen MacDougall escaped when the charges against her were found not proven.

William Hare is said to have died a penniless pauper in London in 1859. Robert Knox - the doctor who willingly bought most of Burke and Hare's bodies was never prosecuted.

Thomas Quick (15+) Sweden's premiere serial killer. Tommy Boy killed at least 10 people in Sweden during a two-year rampage. Like many serial killers Tom was physically and sexually abused as a child. Growing up, the lethal Swede wanted to be a priest. Instead, he became a serial killer. He committed his first murder when he was 14. He enjoyed killing young boys and having sex with their corpses. He was also fond of dismembering his victims and keeping trophy-like body parts. While in custody he claimed to have a "private graveyard," which authoritites never found.

He was found guilty of killing a Dutch family vacationing in the north of Sweden. On May 28, 1997, he was also convicted for the 1988 murder of the Israeli tourist Yinon Levy. While in custody Thomas confessed to six killings in Norway. Police investigating the validity of his claims have found evidence linking him to five more kills.

On November 14, 1997, Norwegian police found bone fragments from a calf believed to be of Therese Johannessen. The case -- one of Norway's most notorious murders -- was under investigation for almost ten years. The girl disappeared from a residential area in Drammen on July 3, 1988. Nothing was ever heard of her again until March 30, 1996, when Quick confessed to abducting and killing her. He described her wristwatch with great detail, and pointed out a gravelpit near the pond where he supposedly bur