Bathory carried out a 16th-century reign of terror, torturing and murdering more than 600 victims from her family estate in Transylvania. Known as the "blood countess", she was seen as a true vampire because she bathed in the blood of some victims, believing it would keep her skin looking young.

Ted Bundy (United States)

Although he admitted killing 36 young women it is thought he may have killed up to 100 girls and young women. He was executed in Florida's electric chair in 1989.

Andrei Chikatilo (Russia)

Chikatilo grew up believing that his older brother had been kidnapped and cannibalised during the great Ukrainian famine of the 1930s and mutilated some of his 53 women and child victims by gnawing on their flesh. His taste for murder started in 1978 and ended 12 years later. Known as the "Rostov Ripper", he was the subject of the film Citizen X, and executed in 1992.

Jeffrey Dahmer (US)

He confessed to killing 17 young men and boys. Dahmer, 34, slept with many victims after killing them, and also dismembered and ate some. In 1992, he was sentenced to serve 957 years in prison but was killed two years later by another inmate.

John Wayne Gacy (US)

He killed and raped 33 young men and boys before his arrest in 1978. Gacy buried most of victims beneath his house. He died by lethal injection in May 1994, aged 52.

Donald Henry Gaskins (US)

Executed in 1991 for a series of murders, Gaskins is thought to have killed more than 100 people.

Luis Alfredo Gavarito (Colombia)

In 1999 Gavarito confessed to the rape, torture and murder of 140 children.

Delfina and Maria de Jesus Gonzales (Mexico)

The sisters owned a brothel and killed its prostitutes and clients. The two were arrested and, in 1964, sentenced to 40 years in prison after police found the bodies of 91 people during a raid on the bordello.

Javed Iqbal (Pakistan)

Iqbal was sentenced to death in 2000 for murdering and mutilating 100 children.

Pedro Lopez (Colombia)

Branded "the monster of the Andes", Lopez raped and killed 300 young girls in Colombia, Ecuador and Peru in the 1970s. He was convicted in 1980 of 57 charges.

Henry Lee Lucas (US)

He was convicted of nine murders but a series of confessions prompted authorities to clear their books of more than 600 murders during the 70s and mid-80s. George Bush, then the Texas governor, commuted his original death sentence in 1998. He died in jail in 2001.

Bruno Ludke (Germany)

He killed at least 80 people, mainly women, after beginning his 15-year killing spree in 1928. Declared insane, he was sent to a Vienna hospital where experiments were carried out on him until he died by lethal injection in 1944.

Anatoly Onoprienko (Ukraine)

Nicknamed the "terminator" by police, he confessed to 52 murders and issued a press release from his cell saying he had wanted to achieve the world record for killing. Onoprienko was sentenced to death in 1999.

Marcel Petiot (France)

He built a soundproof home in which he killed up to 63 people during the second world war. He killed his victims, mainly Jews fleeing the Nazis, by giving them a lethal injection that he said was a "vaccination against foreign diseases". He was guillotined in 1946.

Gary Leon Ridgway (US)

In 2003, Ridgway, who targeted prostitutes, pleaded guilty to 48 killings. He was dubbed the "Green River Killer" because of the location of the murders. He was sentenced to life without parole in 2003 after agreeing to help police find the bodies.

Harold Shipman (UK)

The doctor from Manchester was convicted in 2000 of killing 15 elderly and middle-aged female patients between March 1995 and July 1998. An investigation after the trial concluded Shipman had killed more than 200 people. Shipman was found dead, hanging in his cell at Wakefield prison in January 2004.

Hu Wanlin (China)

Arrested in 1999 on suspicion of causing the deaths of 146 people. A self-proclaimed healer and ex-convict, he called himself a doctor with magical healing powers. It is unclear how he caused the deaths.