Partly due to their mysterious nature, serial killers have a kind of weird popularity among the general public. It’s unbelievable and just horrifying for most of us to accept the fact that they are the devil itself on earth. The words coming out of their mouths are even scarier and to be honest, a bit poetic. Here are 11 quotes from famous serial killers mostly from their “defense” speeches at trials.
Known to his family and friends as Reg, Christie was an English serial killer active during the 1940s and early 1950s. He murdered at least eight women – including his wife, Ethel – by strangling them in his flat. Christie was arrested and convicted of his wife's murder, for which he was hanged.
John David Smith is an American murderer convicted of killing his first wife and also believed to have murdered his second, although her body has never been located. Additionally, skull fragments were found in a locker owned by him that belonged to a third, unidentified, woman. He was arrested in October 2000, and the trial began in 2001.
Ted Bundy was an American serial killer, kidnapper, rapist, burglar, and necrophile who assaulted and murdered numerous young women and girls during the 1970s. He was regarded as handsome and charismatic by many of his young female victims, and he exploited them to win their trust. He once called himself 'the most cold-hearted son of a bitch you'll ever meet.' Attorney Polly Nelson, a member of his last defense team, agreed. 'Ted,' she wrote, 'was the very definition of heartless evil.'
Edmund Kemper, also known as the Co-ed Butcher or the Co-ed Killer, is an American serial killer, necrophile, and suspected cannibal who committed the abduction and murder of several women in the early 1970s, as well as the murders of both of his paternal grandparents and his mother. Kemper is known for his large stature and high intelligence, that left his victims with little chance to overcome him.
David Berkowitz, also known also as the Son of Sam and the .44 Caliber Killer, is an American serial killer who was convicted of eight separate shooting attacks that began in New York City during the summer of 1976. He confessed all his convictions, and claimed to have been obeying the orders of a demon, manifested in the form of a dog 'Harvey' who belonged to his neighbor 'Sam.'
He was an American serial killer also known as the Brooklyn Vampire. A child rapist and cannibal, he boasted that he 'had children in every state,' and at one time stated the number was about 100. He was put on trial for the kidnapping and murder of Grace Budd and was convicted and executed by electric chair.
Charles Milles Manson is an American criminal who led what became known as the Manson Family, a quasi-commune that arose in California in the late 1960s. Manson and his followers committed a series of nine murders at four locations over a period of five weeks in the middle of 1969. Manson believed in what he called 'Helter Skelter,' a term he took from the Beatles' song of the same name. Manson believed Helter Skelter to be an impending apocalyptic race war, which he described in his own version of the lyrics to the Beatles' song. He believed the murders would help precipitate that war. From the beginning of his notoriety, a pop culture arose around him in which he ultimately became an emblem of insanity, violence, and the macabre.
Before the murders, he was a singer-songwriter on the fringe of the Los Angeles music industry, chiefly through a chance association with Dennis Wilson, drummer and founding member of the Beach Boys. After Manson was charged with the crimes of which he was later convicted, recordings of songs written and performed by him were released commercially. Various musicians have covered some of his songs.
Dennis Andrew Nilsen is a British serial killer and necrophiliac, also known as the Muswell Hill Murderer and the Kindly Killer, who murdered at least 12 young men in a series of killings committed between 1978 and 1983 in London, England. Nilsen became known as the Muswell Hill Murderer as his later murders were committed in the Muswell Hill district of North London; he also became known as the Kindly Killer, in reference to his belief that his method of murder was the most humane.
John Wayne Gacy, also known as the Killer Clown, was an American serial killer and rapist. He sexually assaulted and murdered at least 33 teenage boys and young men between 1972 and 1978 in Cook County, Illinois. Gacy became known as the 'Killer Clown' due to his charitable services at fundraising events, parades, and children's parties where he would dress as 'Pogo the Clown,' a character he devised himself.
Carl Panzram was a serial killer, rapist, arsonist, and burglar. In jailhouse confessions and his autobiography, he claimed that he had committed 21 murders—most of which could not be corroborated—and sodomized over 1,000 boys and men. After a series of imprisonments and escapes, he was executed in 1930 for the murder of a prison employee at Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary.
Peter Coonan is an English serial killer who was dubbed the 'Yorkshire Ripper' by the press. In 1981, Sutcliffe was convicted of murdering thirteen women and attempting to murder seven others. At his trial, he pleaded not guilty to murder on grounds of diminished responsibility, owing to a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia; but the defense was rejected by a majority of the jury. He is serving twenty concurrent sentences of life imprisonment.