10 Terrifying Serial Killers from Centuries Ago

As much as we may think it is a problem of the modern age, serial killers are not just a 20th-century (or 21st-century) phenomenon. Sure, it’s true that it feels like about a thousand of them were running around California in the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s. And the truth is that there are a surprising number of serial killers still active today who haven’t been caught… yet. But serial killing goes way (way, way) back in history!

In this list, we’ll take a long look at ten serial killers who lived hundreds or sometimes thousands of years ago. These killers brought havoc and terror to their victims just like any modern serial killer would. And they live on today as historians recall their gruesome crimes and put them into the context of the long-ago times they lived in. Serial killing… it’s not just a creation of modern society!

Related: Top 10 Facts About The Serial Killer Time Forgot

10 Liu Pengli

Liu Pengli was a prince of Jidong in China during the 1st century BC. He was from the ruling family that lived under the powerful and popular emperor Jing, who was his uncle. However, while Jing and his charges may have been reasonably well-liked throughout the territory, everybody came to dread Liu Pengli as he grew into a teenager and young adult.

That’s because he would order slaves to go with him on raiding parties late at night around the lands owned by the Jidong rulers. On those lands, he would come across civilians, break into their homes, and slaughter them. Liu Pengli’s roving band of marauders was very well known at that point in Chinese history.

People who lived on lands under Jing’s purview were forced to brace themselves every night for the possibility of an attack from Liu Pengli and his group of slave warriors. The attacks had no purpose other than to inflict harm. Liu loved to see people beaten, raped, stabbed, and murdered. So, that’s what he did—to the tune of more than 100 dead bodies over several years leading up to 116 BC.

In the end, the emperor’s court brought Liu up on charges of murder. While he was powerful and part of the most powerful family in the region, his actions were simply too egregious to ignore. The court recommended that he be executed immediately, saying he was unsalvageable.

The emperor Jing took pity on him, though, and merely excommunicated him. In 116 BC, Liu Pengli was thrown out of the royal family, made a commoner, and exiled to Shangyong, which is in the modern-day Hubei Province. It’s unknown what became of him from there.^[1]

9 Locusta of Gaul

Locusta of Gaul was a mostly ordinary Roman peasant born in the countryside shortly after Jesus Christ’s time on Earth. But she would become the first confirmed female serial killer, and one of the first serial killers altogether, during her unlikely and secretive reign of terror. She knew a lot about potions and concoctions and used that in her life to rise to real power within Rome.

Specifically, she would make poisons and test out their lethality on local children in the area. Many of those children died—a number still debated by historians today. But what they do know is that she was responsible for killing at least five people directly with her poison, and likely several more confirmed cases beyond that.

Her most notable poisonings were the assassinations of both Claudius and Britannicus. In that way, she became a favorite of the embattled and controversial emperor Nero. For several years after AD 60, Nero brought Locusta under his wing and had her study poisoning even more directly. He had her provide training to other poisoners whom he employed. He also had her kill multiple people who Nero didn’t care for with her deadly concoctions.

In the end, after Nero died, Locusta was rounded up by his successor, Galba, and killed as well. While Galba didn’t reign for very long (only AD 68-69), he knew he had to eliminate the deadly Locusta. So that’s what he did—and the world’s first confirmed serial killer met her own gruesome end.^[2]

8 Alice Kyteler

Born in 1263, Alice Kyteler was the first person ever condemned to die for practicing witchcraft in Ireland. However, she didn’t make it to the gallows or burned at the stake—she managed to escape to either England or Flanders. She then disappeared forever from there.

Basically, Alice was a shrewd Irish woman who married rich over and over again. Soon after each marriage, her husbands died under very mysterious circumstances. That happened three times, after which Alice was granted big-time money from their estates. Then, her fourth husband, John le Poer, finally realized something was very wrong.

In the early 1320s, he suddenly developed a vicious sickness out of nowhere. That sickness eventually led to his death. But before he died, he raised the suspicion that his death—and that of his predecessors in their relationships with Alice—may have come at her hand and not by natural means. He didn’t think Alice was a witch, for what it was worth. Instead, he believed that he was being poisoned by his wife, as she wanted access to his considerable estate after his passing.

As it turns out, le Poer was probably right. But that’s not how things ended up!

In 1324, after le Poer died and his children from prior marriages had to fight Kyteler over access to his estate, Alice was persecuted for being a witch. She never made it to the stake, though. She absconded from Ireland and disappeared forever. In her place, her servant Petronella de Meath was the one flogged and burned to death at the stake.

Petronella was also seen as a supposed witch working in tandem with Alice. On November 3, 1324, she was killed over it. As for Alice, this presumed serial killer was never heard from again after 1325, and it’s unknown what happened to her—or if she killed more husbands.^[3]

7 Gilles de Rais

Gilles de Rais was born just after the turn of the 15th century and lived in a significant time in French history. He was a knight and lord from Brittany from a powerful and wealthy family. He also had a major impact on military happenings in the 15th century. For one, he was a companion-in-arms to the legendary Joan of Arc.

He was a noted leader in the French army and enjoyed considerable fame and a very stellar reputation in his young adult years for his bravery and ability to win battles. But then, by the late 1430s, all that came crumbling down after he was accused of raping, torturing, and murdering possibly as many as 140 children throughout France.

Things started to fall apart for Gilles by about 1433. That year, he slowly withdrew from his fighting and leadership roles in the Hundred Years’ War. He also started squandering his considerable fortune by purchasing lavish things, including jewelry, food, and more. He had insanely high expenses for the time, and to cover his bills, he started selling off his lands to the highest bidder.

His family, particularly his influential younger brother René de La Suze, did not like that. Eventually, by 1435, Gilles was placed under interdict (as in, he couldn’t receive church privileges or participate in church functions) by King Charles VII. Then, in May of 1440, it all really came crashing down. That month, Gilles assaulted a cleric named Jean Le Ferron inside a church. He then moved to seize the local castle in Saint-Étienne-de-Mer-Morte and keep it for himself.

Neither the French monarchical leadership nor the church liked that very much. He was arrested by September and taken to Brittany to stand trial for that assault and various other charges. In October 1440, his trial came to be. In it, prosecutors accused him of sodomizing and murdering more than 140 children. He was condemned to be hanged for the killings, and on October 26, he and two of his servants were sent to the scaffold to die.^[4]

6 Peter Stumpp

Born in 1535, Peter Stumpp was a German farmer who was accused of being a serial killer, a werewolf, and a cannibal. Known by the end of his life as the so-called “Werewolf of Bedburg,” he was eventually burned at the stake and brutally executed in 1589.

Stumpp went on trial in the 1580s for the alleged murders of more than a dozen women and children. When questioned, he claimed to have been practicing black magic since he was 12 years old. The Devil himself supposedly gave Stumpp a magical belt, or a girdle, which allowed him to transform into a wolf when worn. He used his new wolf-like capabilities to hunt down children, attack them, slaughter them, and eat their flesh.

That’s what contemporary accounts from the late 16th century claimed, at least. But whether you can believe that Stumpp was a werewolf or not, one thing isn’t in question: he admitted to killing and eating 14 children. He also copped to slaughtering two pregnant women and ripping their fetuses from their wombs to use the unborn babies to practice black magic. He supposedly even killed and ate his own son among the 14 children he murdered.

In addition to being a serial killer, Stumpp was accused of having an incestuous relationship with his own daughter. The two were supposedly working in tandem, along with the Devil, to kill children and eat them. In the end, on October 31, 1589, Stumpp, his daughter, and his mistress were all executed. His death was one of the most gruesome in the history of any execution that ever took place.

Stumpp was put to the wheel, which was turned mercilessly, and his flesh was torn from his body. Then, his limbs were broken with the blunt side of an axehead. Following that, he was beheaded. His daughter and mistress were both flayed and strangled, too. Then, Stumpp’s head was placed on top of a pole and put in the center of the city as a reminder to other people of what happens to werewolves and witches.^[5]

5 Gilles Garnier

Gilles Garnier was a reclusive hermit who lived on the outskirts of the French town of Dole in the 1560s and 1570s. He got married one day and brought his new wife to live with him at his home outside town. But he wasn’t a very rich man, nor was he very skilled in the ways of living, and he found it difficult to provide enough food to feed more than just himself.

Therefore, he started abducting, killing, and eating the flesh of local children for sustenance. That’s how the story went at Garnier’s trial, at least. He was accused in 1573 of killing multiple young kids around town, chopping them up, and eating their flesh.

As the story goes, Garnier was apparently hunting for food in the forest one night. Suddenly, some kind of spirit appeared before him. It offered to ease his troubles if he only took an ointment that would allow him to turn into a wolf, thus making hunting easier. Garnier took the ointment, and suddenly, he was able to hunt down prey—including children.

In turn, Gilles confessed to stalking, attacking, and killing four children who were between the ages of 9 and 12. In each case, he ripped flesh from the children’s limbs and ate it for himself while also bringing back slabs of meat for his wife to eat.

There were also several other attacks in which his intended victims survived after people came across what Garnier was doing outside Dole, and he was forced to run off. In the end, he was found guilty of the “crimes of lycanthropy and witchcraft” and burned at the stake on January 18, 1573, for being a werewolf… and a serial killer.^[6]

4 Björn Pétursson

Björn Pétursson was an Icelandic man born in 1555 who acquired a lot of farmland on the treacherous Snæfellsnes peninsula. It all started when he was 15 years old. In about 1570, he began to help a rich neighbor named Ormur on his farm. Ormur died a few years after that, leaving his entire estate to his son, Guðmundur.

By that time, Guðmundur was good friends with Björn (who was known by many people as “Axlar-Björn”). Wanting to help out his buddy after Ormur’s death, Guðmundur bestowed a farm upon Axlar-Björn and granted him ownership of a good bit of land. There, Axlar-Björn married a woman named Þórdís Ólafsdóttir and settled in to farm for the rest of his life. But the drama and terror were only just beginning…

According to legends written hundreds of years later in Icelandic sagas, Axlar-Björn supposedly killed somewhere between 9 and 18 travelers and potential farmhands. In some cases, these were people traveling through the peninsula on their way to other places. In other cases, young men showed up to Axlar-Björn’s farm, looking for work, only to be murdered.

Some versions of the legend claim that he killed them with an ax and hacked up their bodies. Other versions assert that he drowned them. Either way, locals began to get suspicious over a period of years after Axlar-Björn started to greatly increase his possessions. Despite living such a modest life, he had all kinds of new horses, and people couldn’t figure out how he was getting those animals and other things.

Still, Guðmundur had become very powerful in the region by then, so Axlar-Björn was mostly spared from judgment. Eventually, by 1596, that all ended. Axlar-Björn was arrested, and he confessed to nine murders. But when Icelandic authorities showed up at his farm, they found more than twice that amount of bodies buried haphazardly around the place. Axlar-Björn tried to claim that he had found the remains already buried on his land from some time before he got there. He had been waiting to tell authorities about the bodies so they could be buried properly.

Of course, they didn’t believe that story. In the end, Axlar-Björn was executed in 1596 for his string of serial murders—and his wife, who was pregnant at the time with their son, was forced to watch the execution take place.^[7]

3 Lewis Hutchinson

Lewis Hutchinson was a Scottish immigrant to Jamaica in the middle of the 18th century who has the unpleasant distinction of becoming Jamaica’s first serial killer—and one of its most prolific. In the 1760s, he came to Jamaica to take care of an estate called Edinburgh Castle. At some point, he managed to legally obtain the rights to the house. He also had a large group of cattle on his property—supposedly thanks to stealing them from his neighbors.

At the time, Edinburgh Castle was in a very rural part of Jamaica along a very infrequently traversed road. But when travelers would come through on their way to Saint Ann’s Bay, Hutchinson had a little surprise for them. The “Mad Doctor,” as he came to be known, would invite them to rest at his estate. Then, he would kill them entirely for sport.

In what was described as a series of thrill killings, Hutchinson would shoot travelers just for the fun of it. According to legend, he was said to drink his victims’ blood after their deaths. Other legends claim that he or his slaves would toss the victims’ bodies into a sinkhole for his animals to eat. That sinkhole later became known as Hutchinson’s Hole and was notorious for years in Jamaica.

He was infamous across Jamaica and feared by everyone there. But eventually, fate came for Hutchinson. He shot an English soldier by the name of John Calendar, who had been attempting to arrest him. Knowing there would be consequences for that shooting, Hutchinson fled from his estate and boarded a ship in the Old Harbour.

The British Royal Navy wanted revenge for the death of their peer, though, and they tracked Hutchinson down very quickly. Hutchinson was caught in the harbor before he could escape. He was then arrested and imprisoned. In turn, his home was searched after his arrest.

While his full number of victims is unknown, authorities found 43 watches and an incredibly large amount of clothing in Hutchinson’s estate—presumably belonging to his victims. He was executed in the Spanish Town Square in Jamaica in 1773.^[8]

2 Juan Severino Mallari

Juan Severino Mallari was a Filipino Catholic priest who rose higher in the ranks of the Catholic Church within the Philippines in the early 19th century than any other native Filipino before him. Unfortunately, he was also a serial killer who supposedly killed as many as 57 people in and around the area of Magalang, Pampanga.

From 1818 to 1826, Mallari served as the parish priest of the San Bartolome Church in Magalang. When he ascended to that position in 1826, he became the first-ever Filipino to become a parish priest there. Sadly, at some point during that period, he began to believe that his mother was cursed. In turn, he felt that he could somehow cure his mother’s bad luck and various health ailments if only he killed people. We’re not really sure how those two things connect, but that is what Mallari told himself—so the killing began.

For years, Mallari went about killing people in and around Magalang and throughout Pampanga. The bodies of at least 57 people turned up during that time. They were found in different areas, with various methods and causes of death. So authorities had a tough time pinning the whole thing on one person.

They thought multiple killers were operating, or many domestic issues and/or robberies were taking place. They had no idea that one person was operating with impunity throughout the region—and even less of an idea that the person killing all those victims was a priest.

At some point in 1826, Mallari himself fell ill. An attending priest came by his home to look after Mallari. There, the priest found a massive amount of blood-stained clothing and possessions from many of the area’s murder victims. Authorities swooped in, investigated Mallari, and arrested him. He served the next 14 years in prison while Spanish authorities in the Philippines tried to figure out what to do with him.

Some doctors argued that he was mentally unwell and should be sent to live in an asylum for the rest of his life. But eventually, in 1840, the Spanish government in the Philippines executed Mallari by hanging.^[9]

1 John Lynch

John Lynch was born in Ireland in 1812 and would go on in his 30 short years of life to become Australia’s most prolific serial killer. He was first sent to Australia as a convict floated in as part of their penal colony. There, he was tasked with working on a farm in the Berrima district. In 1836, he was accused of murdering a fellow convict assigned to the farm, but he was eventually acquitted of that charge.

In the six years after that, though, it appears that Lynch went a little haywire. Over the next few years, he absconded from his time as part of a convict gang on the farm and moved freely about the Berrima district. On at least two occasions in the spring and summer of 1841, he was said to have murdered people traveling along the road between Berrima and Camden.

Then, late in 1841, Lynch set up his big killing. He got to the farm of a man named John Mulligan in the Berrima district. There, Lynch murdered Mulligan and his entire family and took possession of the farm for himself. Under the name of John Dunleavy, Lynch attempted to act as if nothing untoward had happened. He wasn’t free for long, though.

Lynch killed again later that year—murdering a man named Kearns Landregan—and was eventually arrested and convicted for that crime. In April 1842, with ten or possibly even more murders ascribed to him, Lynch was executed by hanging.^[10]