Documentaries, films, podcasts, the public's fascination with serial killers is pushing networks to create original productions retracing the sordid stories of these men and women often marked by trauma from a very young age. Netflix has even made itself the standard-bearer through its series "Monsters," including a very popular season centered on Jeffrey Dahmer. An opportunity to revisit these five serial killers with particularly horrific methods.
Warning: the following lines may shock the most sensitive souls. We therefore advise these people not to continue reading.
#5 Ed Gein and the Woman's Skin Lamp
We start off strong with Ed Gein, a Wisconsin farmer raised harshly by a fanatical Lutheran mother, to whom we officially owe two femicides perpetrated between 1953 and 1957. This farmer, arrested and charged at the age of 51, distinguished himself by the horrific abuse and mutilations inflicted on his two victims, and by his fascination with digging up corpses to tear off their skin. The sheriff in charge of the case reported seeing an armchair created from human skin, noses, and organs. feminine, as well as a lamp also made of human skin. The goal: to recreate his deceased mother. A woman who hated women and prevented her son from approaching them. A form of exacerbated puritanism that deeply weakened Ed Gein as a child, to the point of making him psychologically unstable. His story inspired films like Psycho, The Silence of the Lambs, or The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Netflix is also exploring his case in its series Monsters.
#4 Ted Bundy and his ladybug
Certainly one of the most famous killers in all of America. Ted Bundy took the lives of at least thirty victims in the 1970s, all young women. His modus operandi: He posed as a wounded man with a bandaged arm before forcing his victims into his vehicle to abduct them, isolate them (often in the forest) and then kill and rape them. He also confessed to committing necrophiliac acts on the corpses and beheaded some of the women to keep their heads at home as souvenirs. His Beetle, the car he used to transport the bodies, is now tragically iconic. It is the subject of an exhibition in Paris in spring 2025, alongside other famous serial killer objects.
#3 Leonarda Cianciulli and her pot
Also called the "Saponifier of Correggio," Leonarda Cianciulli was known for cooking her victims in her pot. One of the most gruesome stories in all of 20th-century Italy, this fortune teller lured three women into her home between 1939 and 1940, promising them good news, before killing and dismembering them with an axe. The limbs were then cooked with soda to make soap. As for the victims' blood, it was dried before being incorporated into recipes such as cakes, which she served to her visitors. Deeply superstitious, she lost ten children in infancy and saw her human sacrifices as rituals, intended to protect one of her sons who had enlisted in the navy. Today, the pot is on display at the Criminological Museum in Rome.
#2 Jeffrey Dahmer and Zombification
In 2022, Netflix introduced the whole of France to the story of Jeffrey Dahmer, the perpetrator of 17 murders between 1978 and 1991. Suffering from a profound fear of abandonment, the man nicknamed "The Milwaukee Cannibal" liked to attract men aged 15 to 34, drilling a hole in his victims' heads in order to inject hydrochloric acid or boiling water into the frontal lobe. A lobotomy that kept his victims - still alive - in a state of zombification. A way to maintain control over them so that they would not leave him. As his infamous nickname indicates, Jeffrey Dahmer liked to consume certain parts of the young men he murdered, such as biceps or hearts. Although he never explained the causes of these atrocities, they could be interpreted in this way: by eating his victims' organs, they would then become an integral part of him.
#1 Richard Ramirez and Satanism
In just 14 months, Richard Ramirez frightened all of America. Nicknamed the "Night Stalker", he liked to break into people's homes in the dead of night (often through a window or door left open) before brutally murdering his victims. Special feature: he drew pentagrams (a satanic symbol made of inverted five-pointed stars) on the walls of crime scenes with the blood of his victims. Suffering from visions and hallucinations at a very young age due to temporal lobe epilepsy, he worshipped Satan and occult practices. It is said that he liked to listen to the AC/DC song "Night Prowler" on repeat during his murderous night patrols, wearing a cap with the band's logo on his head. Faced with the controversy that erupted and under pressure from religious fundamentalist groups, the rock band had to cancel one of its tours in 1984.
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