Serial Killers

In 1993, a 13-year-old boy was sent to live with his father in Alaska, where he grew into one of the state’s deadliest serial killers. He committed his first murder just a year later — a case that ran cold for well over a decade before a series of confessions revealed more than one ghastly crime.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

As an adult, Cary Stayner finally turned his darkest fantasies into reality. Using TV crime shows as textbooks, he killed his victims, then laid out a path of false clues to confuse investigators. But when he eventually slips up, it all comes crashing down. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

As a troubled teen in the ‘70s, Cary Stayner experienced violent fantasies and compulsions, as well as the traumatic kidnapping of his brother. He found refuge in Yosemite National Park as an adult, but unfortunately, it didn't halt his spiral into murder. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Timothy Joseph McGhee joined the Toonerville Rifa Gang as a boy, and quickly rose through the ranks. By the year 2000, he had turned the low-level Los Angeles gang into a very real threat. But McGhee’s violent nature went beyond the role he played in the gang. For him, murder was an obsession. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Carl Großmann’s entire life was marked with an obsession with sexual dominance. As a young man, he violated children and animals as a way to emphasize his own power. But when World War I left Berlin in a state of desperation, Großmann found a new, horrific way to satisfy his murderous cravings. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

After spending much of his early life as a devoted career criminal, Ed Edwards emerged from prison willing to turn things around. But after playing the role of devoted husband and father for a few years, his darker impulses emerged, and he started killing — first for revenge, then for fun, and then for profit. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Beginning with a traumatic childhood is a common origin story among serial killers. But not every child with a troubled upbringing sets out to become a lifelong criminal. That's what makes Edward Wayne Edwards so unusual — he wanted to be a crook. And there weren’t many lines he wouldn’t cross.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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