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
The First Documented Serial Killer | 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: The World’s First Serial Killer?
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
The Infamous Medieval Witch Case of 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: The Nobleman Serial Killer (Occult History Explained)
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
Peter Stumpp: The True & Grotesque Case of the Bedburg Werewolf | Documentary
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.