Whether these serial killers associated with, copied or even targeted each other, there are plenty of eerie links to investigate. Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we’re looking at serial killers who share some sort of surprising connection.
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00:00Arguably, the most prolific serial killer the United States has ever seen, outranking even Bundy.
00:07Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're looking at serial killers who share some sort of surprising connection.
00:13Whether they've associated with, copied, or even targeted each other, there are eerie links to investigate.
00:19He watches a documentary on the San Francisco Zodiac Killer.
00:25Dennis Rader and Dana Sue Gray, communicated.
00:28The BTK killer was an urban legend for evading authorities during his activities in Kansas between the 1970s and 90s.
00:35Finally, in 2005, Dennis Rader was sentenced to life imprisonment for 10 murders.
00:40There's no way that I can ever repay him.
00:45Among the many who wrote to him afterwards was a writer for Psychology Today,
00:49who received a forwarded prison postcard from Dana Sue Gray.
00:53The former nurse killed and robbed three elderly women before a failed homicide attempt led to her arrest in 1994.
01:00All Greco says is, I think you know what this is about.
01:03Dana is then handcuffed and taken to a waiting police car.
01:07Though Gray claimed to only have financial motivations for killing,
01:10her correspondence with BTK revealed a genuine admiration for a fellow murderer.
01:15She's reportedly reached out to other criminals.
01:18Disturbingly, Rader just boasted about having a higher body count than Gray.
01:23He's just evil, evil personified.
01:26Edmund Kemper and Herbert Mullen, investigation interacted.
01:30I'm an American, and I went off the deep end.
01:34Since 1973, Edmund Kemper has been one of the most infamous inmates at the California Medical Facility in Vacaville.
01:41Many other serial killers have resided there with him, but Kemper has a unique history with Herbert Mullen.
01:47Each man's police investigation was compromised by their being active around the same area and time.
01:52They were finally captured two months apart, then became neighbors again at CMF.
01:57Kemper has claimed that he was previously aware of and had encounters with Mullen for years.
02:03They reportedly interacted more in prison, but mostly with hostility.
02:07Kemper nevertheless acknowledged finding a kindred spirit in his competitor.
02:12Mullen ultimately died at the California Health Care Facility in Stockton in 2022.
02:17Herbert Mullen died of natural causes.
02:24One of Brazil's most notorious murderers is best known for his connection to a fictional serial killer.
02:29Pedro Rodrigues Filho's primarily targeting suspected criminals inspired Jeff Lindsay to create the vigilante Dexter Morgan.
02:36After leaving prison in 2007, Pedrinho Matador publicly expressed remorse for the many lives he took or planned to take.
02:43Among his targets, he claimed in an interview, was Francisco Diasis Pereira.
02:48Um Maniaco do Parque shocked Brazil when he confessed to 11 sexual assaults and murders in 1998.
02:54He epitomized what Filho stood against and even survived a prison riot in 2000.
02:59While it's uncertain if Filho had a shot at Pereira, he maintained that meeting such violence with violence is senseless.
03:06In 2023, Filho was murdered by multiple unidentified assailants.
03:14Rodney Alcala will go down in history as one of the world's most evil killers.
03:21Rodney Alcala and Richard Cottingham were two of New York's biggest serial killers in the 1970s.
03:27While it's not too surprising that they crossed paths, they did so daily.
03:31In 71, Alcala found work at an office of the health insurance company Blue Cross Blue Shield Association,
03:37where Cottingham worked as a computer operator.
03:40He worked in what they refer to as Midtown Manhattan, right in the heart of the business district, the Blue Cross Blue Shield.
03:48He was still working there when he was apprehended in 1980.
03:52Alcala, however, hopped jobs throughout the East and West Coasts,
03:55earning the nickname the Dating Game Killer for his appearance on the eponymous California-based game show.
04:00The detective frantically tried to call the police department and let other detectives know that he was on television.
04:05He and the Torso Killer later claimed that they never interacted while working for BCBS.
04:10The coincidence nonetheless reflects the scale of New York's serial killing crisis at the time.
04:19In the more than 130 years since Jack the Ripper terrorized London, he has never been officially identified.
04:26The only name linked with the Whitechapel murders is Strange Character Who Prowls About After Midnight.
04:32But in the 1970s, he seemed to be active again in West Yorkshire.
04:36Peter Sutcliffe was ultimately convicted of killing 13 women, many of them sex workers.
04:41This profession was targeted by the Ripper and still attracts many serial killers.
04:46Though Sutcliffe didn't claim to be a copycat, his MO earned him the nickname the Yorkshire Ripper.
04:51Moreover, John Humble of Wearside infamously disrupted the police investigation
04:56by submitting a false confession signed Jack the Ripper.
04:59The author signed himself Jack the Ripper.
05:02Whatever Sutcliffe's objective was, his legacy is entangled with one of England's most fabled criminals.
05:09The Yorkshire Ripper, in fact, claimed more lives than his namesake.
05:12Sutcliffe knew it was caught and it was then he said,
05:16I know what you're leading up to. It's me, I'm the Ripper.
05:20Kenneth Bianchi and Richard Ramirez, Jail Cell.
05:23The hillside strangler shook Los Angeles well before the killer was revealed to actually be two people.
05:29Bono and Bianchi would move in together and become partners in crime.
05:34It's believed that cousins Kenneth Bianchi and Angelo Bono Jr.
05:37partly inspired Richard Ramirez's killing spree.
05:40In any case, the Night Stalker found an unsettling upside to his arrest in 1985.
05:45According to the 2021 docuseries Night Stalker, The Hunt for a Serial Killer,
05:50Ramirez was elated to be placed in the same jail cell that held Bianchi after his own arrest.
05:55I said, we're going to put you in the same cell as a hillside strangler.
05:59With LA's long history of serial killers,
06:01two were likely to occupy the same space at a police station.
06:05But Ramirez's enthusiasm for his fellow killers and this coincidence
06:09distinguishes it as another indictment of his warped psyche.
06:12That's where we left him. We left him in Kenneth Bianchi's old cell.
06:20Besides his enterprises of Pogo the Clown and sadistic homicide,
06:24John Wayne Gacy ran the Chicagoland construction business PDM Contractors.
06:29By June 1971, Gacy had saved enough money to start his own contracting company.
06:35He called it PDM.
06:37Some of his victims worked for him.
06:39Years into his prison sentence,
06:41Gacy began insisting that most of the 33 murders behind his death penalty
06:45were committed by employees.
06:47Hell, if you could see my schedule, my work schedule,
06:50you know damn well that I was never out there.
06:52The only real substance to this far-fetched claim was Robin Goethe.
06:56The handyman led his own group, the Ripper Crew,
06:58who murdered 18 women in occult rituals during the 1980s.
07:02Investigation discovery found evidence that Goethe did work for Gacy,
07:06but none that they collaborated on anything other than contract work.
07:10Whatever influence both men might have had on each other,
07:12their unspeakable crimes were made worse by their organizational skills.
07:16He loved the idea that he could tell people,
07:21this is what I want you to do. I'm the boss.
07:28The serial killer known as Zodiac has been mythologized
07:32due to his never being captured.
07:34But the shocking truth is that Toschi very nearly did capture the Zodiac,
07:39as one of his letters revealed.
07:41Thankfully, Heriberto Eddie Seda was.
07:44He targeted people based on their Zodiac signs
07:46and sent coded letters to police and media.
07:49Seda had attacked nine people,
07:51killing three by the time he was apprehended in 1996.
07:54His age alone ruled out the theory that the so-called New York Zodiac killer
07:58was the same person who murdered five in the San Francisco Bay Area in the late 60s.
08:03Seda was just an admirer,
08:05that rare example of a copycat who attained his own status as a serial killer.
08:09Somewhere in that developing psyche,
08:13he thinks perhaps I could become the Zodiac killer.
08:18He is now serving 232 years in prison,
08:22while the original Zodiac killer remains officially unidentified.
08:26The FBI released a statement saying,
08:29The Zodiac killer case remains an ongoing investigation for the FBI San Francisco division.
08:38Otis Toole claimed to commit hundreds more murders than the six he was convicted on.
08:42He most notably confessed to,
08:44but was not formally charged with killing the six-year-old son
08:47of America's Most Wanted host John Walsh.
08:50In 2007, it was publicly revealed that police also looked into
08:54another Florida-based suspected serial killer.
08:56Jeffrey Dahmer was in the same mall on the same day
08:59Adam Walsh was abducted from a Sears department store.
09:06Some even theorized that he and Toole collaborated on the crime.
09:10The official record is that Henry Lee Lucas was Toole's only partner.
09:14Still, with so much overlap between his and Dahmer's profile and methods,
09:19their paths crossing is its own loaded true crime subject.
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09:43In the years leading up to his execution,
09:45Ted Bundy became an asset in understanding the nature of serial killers.
09:49He especially helped in understanding the nature of one in particular.
09:53In 1984, Bundy offered to assist a task force pursuing
09:57Washington State's Green River Killer.
09:59His prison interviews provided insight into the nature of the serial killer,
10:03and how he was involved in the crime.
10:05In 2014, Ted Bundy was sentenced to six years in prison.
10:10His prison interviews provided insight into the mindset
10:13and behavioral patterns unique to his psychopathology.
10:16But Gary Ridgway would not be apprehended until 2001,
10:2012 years after Bundy's execution.
10:26DNA profiling ultimately brought him down,
10:29but many of Bundy's predictions of his character were uncanny.
10:33His own psychological profiling is a notable example of how terrible minds think alike.
10:38According to interviewer Dave Reichert, however,
10:40Bundy was likely just jealous of Ridgway's twisted fame.
10:46What are some other remarkable connections between notorious criminals?
10:49Provide a tip in the comments.
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