• 3 months ago
It doesn't get much darker than killers inspiring killers. Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we’re examining ten of the most famous copycats who modeled their crimes after other killers.

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00:00We'd heard his surname that many times. Like, he did brag about it too.
00:03Yeah.
00:03Like, he looked up to his uncle and he'd made that clear.
00:06Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're examining 10 of the most famous copycats
00:10who modeled their crimes after other killers.
00:22Peter Sutcliffe, inspired by Jack the Ripper.
00:25As West Yorkshire police launched a second murder hunt,
00:28newspapers were already calling the killer Jack the Ripper.
00:32Almost 100 years after Jack the Ripper terrorized London in 1888,
00:36another Ripper took to the seedy streets of England.
00:39Unlike his model, this one was eventually caught.
00:42He was Peter Sutcliffe, a truck driver who murdered at least 13 women between 1975 and 1980.
00:48Like Jack the Ripper, he primarily targeted sex workers,
00:51mostly in the red-light district of West Yorkshire.
00:54Undercover police tracked half a million car movements through six northern cities,
01:00looking for men who went looking for prostitutes in more than one red-light district.
01:04Due to the similarities of the cases, the press soon dubbed him the Yorkshire Ripper,
01:08and one famous hoaxer even sent a letter to the Daily Mail pretending to be Sutcliffe,
01:13signing it Jack the Ripper.
01:15Sutcliffe was finally caught in 1981 after a bungled investigation,
01:19and was sentenced to life in prison, where he died in 2020.
01:24It's very hard to explain to people who are not from this part of the world
01:28the effect that this started to have on people.
01:34This Iranian serial killer is the most prolific in the country's history,
01:38with 67 known victims having surpassed Ashgar the murderer.
01:42It's no surprise that he was influenced by the latter.
01:45Ashgar murdered 33 people in the early 20th century before he was finally apprehended in 1934.
01:51When asked to give a reason for his crimes, he claimed,
01:53quote,
01:54"'These are the enemies of society. Because of that, I have killed them.'"
01:57His crime spree influenced Hoshang Amini, who later cited Ashgar as an inspiration,
02:02and claimed a similar motive of wanting to rid society of whom he deemed corrupt and evil.
02:08He was caught in 1962 and publicly executed the following year.
02:16One upmanship is present in most industries, including, evidently, serial killing.
02:21In 1996, the beast of Ukraine, Anatoly Onoprienko,
02:24was apprehended and confessed to murdering 52 people.
02:28They checked the man's credentials. He was 36-year-old Anatoly Onoprienko.
02:34His infamous crime spree supposedly inspired a man named Yevgeny Balan,
02:38who desired to claim a higher body count.
02:40He didn't even come close, as he took the lives of nine people
02:44before he was caught in September 2011.
02:46One of his victims was Svetlana Strysh, Balan's own stepdaughter whom he stalked,
02:50assaulted, and strangled.
02:52He was finally caught when a boxer stumbled across a crime in progress,
02:55punched Balan, and held him down until police arrived.
02:59He was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison.
03:16Some of the more adventurous among you may have seen the famous
03:19Three Guys, One Hammer video taken by the Dnepropetrovsk Maniacs,
03:23which depicts the pair killing Sergei Yatsenko.
03:26It was almost certainly seen by Russian teenagers Artem Anufriev and Nikita Litkin.
03:31According to the press, their crimes were heavily influenced by the Dnepropetrovsk Maniacs,
03:36and they, in turn, were given a similar moniker, the Academy Maniacs.
03:40The pair murdered six and injured nine throughout their crime spree,
03:50which came to an end when Litkin's uncle found video evidence of a murder on Litkin's camera.
03:55They had filmed themselves just as the Dnepropetrovsk Maniacs had done before them.
03:59Both were sentenced to prison, and Litkin took his own life in November 2021.
04:04Matthew Mallett, inspired by Ivan Mallett.
04:08Sometimes killing seems to run in the family.
04:20Ivan Mallett is one of the most notorious killers in Australian history,
04:24having murdered seven tourists in and around Belangelo State Forest.
04:27The case was heavily covered by the media,
04:30and a movie called Wolf Creek was modeled after the so-called backpacker murders.
04:38Years later, Ivan's great-nephew Matthew Mallett murdered his friend David Octorlone,
04:47also inside Belangelo State Forest.
04:49After killing Octorlone, he reportedly told another friend,
04:56Unsurprisingly, the court later argued that he was,
05:01and he was given a prison sentence of 43 years.
05:08He's just so cold-blooded, callous, and heartless.
05:15We return to Russia for the story of Anushervan Rachmanov,
05:18a man suspected of killing seven people in the mid-2010s.
05:22Decades prior, Vladimir Ianyasyan killed a number of people by posing as a gas inspector.
05:27He pretended to be an employee of the Russian gas company Mozgaz,
05:30and with this guise, would enter apartments and kill the inhabitants.
05:34Ianyasyan was executed in 1964.
05:37Exactly 50 years later, Rachmanov began his killing spree,
05:41also posing as a Mozgaz employee and breaking into apartments to terrorize the occupants.
05:46The press even named him Mozgaz II, acknowledging the obvious influence of Ianyasyan.
05:51Rachmanov was eventually caught and confessed to his crimes,
05:54but he took his own life before he could be tried in court.
05:57Luo Shubiao had kleptomania, meaning he couldn't resist stealing items
06:04and was in and out of Chinese labor camps for theft.
06:07In the late 1980s, he began watching videos of graphic violence
06:11and developed a fascination with Lum Kor-Wan,
06:13a serial killer from Hong Kong who murdered four people in 1982.
06:17According to a confession later made by Luo,
06:20he became deeply interested in Lum's grotesque M.O.
06:23and developed a deep desire to emulate it.
06:25So he did exactly that.
06:27Luo murdered 18 people throughout the early 90s,
06:30often mutilating their bodies just as Lum had done before him.
06:33And with one prior murder in 1977, this brought his total body count to 19.
06:39He was convicted of his crimes and executed in 1995.
06:49The Tylenol Killer Copycats, inspired by the Chicago Tylenol murders.
06:54Seven people were dead because someone had laced capsules
06:56of extra-strength Tylenol with cyanide.
06:59And there was fear more people, more innocent people, would die.
07:03The greater Chicago area was struck by a horrifically random crime in the fall of 1982.
07:09Someone had intentionally laced bottles of Tylenol with potassium cyanide,
07:13leading to the deaths of seven people.
07:15The perpetrator was never caught,
07:16and the killings both impacted sales of Halloween candy
07:19and led to the widespread adoption of tamper-resistant packaging.
07:23Unfortunately, it also led to a high number of copycat crimes.
07:27In the years following the initial incident,
07:29there were many reports of people being killed
07:31and grievously injured by tampered capsules,
07:33most of which had been laced with cyanide.
07:36This, in turn, led the pharmaceutical industry
07:38to abandon traditional gelatin capsules in favor of more modern tablets.
07:42We want the people to be aware of this,
07:43and that they probably shouldn't take extra-strength Tylenol at this time
07:47until we can find out the extent of the contamination.
07:49Derek Brown, inspired by Jack the Ripper.
07:52Excuse me, miss.
07:55Peter Sutcliffe was not the only killer who modeled himself after Jack the Ripper.
08:00There was also Derek Brown, a newspaper delivery driver who,
08:03according to the courts, sought notoriety through killing.
08:06He murdered two women, and would have likely killed many more
08:09had he not been caught.
08:10Brown was greatly influenced by Jack the Ripper,
08:13and copied many aspects of his M.O.
08:15One of his victims was a sex worker.
08:17He butchered both of their bodies,
08:19and most telling of all, he killed them both in Whitechapel,
08:22the same area of East London in which Jack operated.
08:25Unlike Jack, Brown was eventually caught
08:27following a thorough police investigation,
08:30and was sentenced to life in prison.
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08:46Heriberto Seda, inspired by the Zodiac Killer.
08:50Heriberto Seda was active in New York throughout the early 90s,
08:53killing three people and injuring a further six.
08:56After each crime, he would send a taunting letter
08:59to the police and media,
09:00and would even include his own personal cryptograms.
09:04Sound familiar?
09:05Yep, it's the Zodiac all over again.
09:07The note had basically more indications of the three priors
09:12as well as birth sign.
09:14In fact, the correlations were so obvious
09:16that New York police even floated the possibility
09:18that it was the Zodiac.
09:20Funnily enough, it wasn't an investigation that brought down Seda,
09:23but a domestic dispute.
09:25Seda's half-sister called the police
09:26after he shot her in the buttocks,
09:28and Seda closed his handwritten statement
09:30with the same symbol he used in the taunting letters.
09:33Police made the connection,
09:34and Seda was thrown in prison for 230 years.
09:38Over six years, Eddie Seda,
09:41Eddie Seda, the copycat Zodiac killer,
09:45stalked the streets of New York City
09:47in search of easy targets.
09:49Can you think of any more examples?
09:51Let us know in the comments below.