1) Christman Genipperteinga – One among the worst serial killers

Profile: He is a 16th century German serial killer known for torturing and killing young women.

Period active: 1568 – 1581

Count: 964 victims

Status: Execution by the breaking wheel.

Modus operandi: Being one among the worst serial killers he failed to aspire his future generation with his sloppy petty crimes, he certainly had a reputation with his sex slaves, mostly women who were tortured, raped. He used to killed their children at birth.

Bizarre element: He used to hang the babies that he had strangled, stretched them out and dance around them singing, “Dance dear, little child, dance! Genipperteinga your father has made the dance for you!”

#2. Thug Behram – Topping the top serial killers

Profile: Considered to be one of the world’s most prolific killers, Thug Behram belongs to the Thuggee cult in India which is known for killing innocent travelers and robbing their valuables. According to the estimates, the cult murdered a million people between 1740 -1840.

Period active: 1790–1840

Count: 931 victims.

Status: Hanged to death in 1840.

Modus operandi: Topping the top serial killers, Behram used his cummerbund which has a large medallion sewed into it. He disguised himself as a travelers, mingled in with the crowd and after gaining his victim’s confidence, he would cast his cummerbund (colloquially called as rumal) around the victim’s neck, the medallion pressing against their Adam’s apple and choking them to death.

Bizarre element: Today the Canova medallion used by Behram to kill his victims is preserved in a private museum. The word ‘Thug’ is borrowed from the word ‘Thuggee’

3) Countess Elizabeth Báthory de Ecsed – She deserves to be in the list of serial killers

Profile: Being one of the worst serial killers and being a woman, she was best known as the Blood countess and she is one of the world’s prolific serial killers in the history. She belonged to the royal family of Báthory in the kingdom of Hungary

Period active: 1604 -1610

Count: 650 victims

Status: Immured to death

Modus operandi: She lures the daughters of local peasants to her castle pretending to offer them with paid words as maidservants. The victims were beaten, starved, the flesh on their faces bitten, burned, frozen and mutilated.

Bizarre element: Recent studies on the killings of the blood countess revealed that she bathed in the blood of the virgins to retain her youth

4) Harold Shipman – A crazy experimenting serial killer

Profile: He is a British doctor popular for his prolificacy in his proven murders which accounts to more than 250.

Period active: 1980 – 1998

Count: 250+ victims

Status: Life imprisonment. He killed himself by hanging in the jail cell.

Modus operandi: In the top serial killers list this notorious shares a main part. He chose elderly patients, drugged them with lethal doses of diamorphine, filled their death certificates and exhumed their bodies.

Bizarre element: The inspiration for his style of killing comes from his mother’s last days in her death bed where she was drugged with morphine to alleviate her pain.

#5. Luis Garavito – A modern vicious serial killer

Profile: ‘La Bestia’ or ‘The Beast’ will surely has a place in any list of serial killers. He is a Colombian rapist and serial killer known for the murder of 147 young boys for which he willfully admitted his guilt.

Period active: The 1980’s

Count: 138 victims.

Status: Life imprisonment.

Modus operandi: He is a worst serial killer select poor and stray children between the age of 8 and 16, lure them with gifts and money. After a long walk, taking advantage of their tiredness he rapes them, cut their throats and dismembered their body parts

Bizarre element: The Colombian government gave him special benefits which included decreasing his sentence to 22 years when he confessed his crimes and helped them locate the bodies of his victims. The guy actually drew a map connecting the places where he picked up his victims and the number exceeds 300 making him one among top serial killers.