E. Reid Ross
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Ivan Farkas
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We've spent the last few years proving that not only do flamboyant killers exist outside the Crystal Lakes and Elm Streets of fiction, but that they also frequently exceed the limits of even our depraved imaginations. Isn't that nice? It's just so rare to see people go above and beyond these days -- even if what they're going above is "the law," and what they're going beyond is "the conventionally defined limits of evil."
Infocus Asia
Indonesian occultist Ahmad Suradji, also known as Nasib Kelewang, was a humble cattle breeder until his late father appeared to him in a dream one night and instructed him to murder 70 women and drink their saliva in order to become a mystic healer. As happens, from time to time.
But rather than wake up, think "That was a strange one," and go about his normal day not murdering women and drinking their saliva, Suradji began murdering women and drinking their saliva. Suradji occupied a privileged position of trust as the local shaman, so women already flocked to his shack seeking his guidance. Suradji lured befuddled victims to a field and buried them waist-deep, then strangled them and drank their saliva to increase his otherworldly influence of the dark arcana. Then, to give the horror that extra-special twist that really sticks with you, Suradji buried the bodies in a sugarcane field, with their heads pointing right at his house.
Infocus Asia
As he demonstrated by re-digging the graves he dug years ago, because Indonesia is an extremely trusting country.
Villagers eventually found a body and implicated Suradji, whose nightmare streak ended at 42, more than halfway to the 70 mandated by his paternal apparition.
Infocus Asia
And exactly 42 closer to his goal than he ever should've gotten.
Suradji was captured and sentenced to death, but we've seen horror movies. We know how this works. He's still got 28 left ...
Honora Kelly, later renamed Jane Toppan by her adoptive parents, endured a childhood so bizarre and tragic that it would be equally at home in either a Dickens novel or an episode of Black Mirror. She lost her mother as a child, so her father surrendered his daughters to the Boston Female Asylum before sewing his own eyelids shut. Toppan, a bratty but brilliant student turned effervescent nurse, was nicknamed "Jolly Jane" by her patients. Her only shortcoming as a nurse? All of her patients died.
Wiki Commons
Nobody's perfect at their job, but some people don't even come close.
Yes, of course Jane was poisoning her patients. Her childhood memories looked like the video from The Ring. The odds against her turning out normal were astronomical. And no, she didn't kill them quickly. Jane toyed with her victims, administering alternating doses of morphine and atropine -- medicine's most potent downer and upper, respectively. She delighted in delivering her victims as close to death's door as possible via morphine, only to yank them back to life with a stimulating shot of atropine. Then, with the victim teetering between life and death, Jane joined them in bed, embraced them, and sometimes even stroked their hair as she injected the lethal dose.
Jane even poisoned her more popular foster sister, Elizabeth Brigham. On a Cape Cod summer day in 1899, Jane invited Elizabeth to a picnic on the beach. Jane supplied corned beef, taffy, and fresh water ... laced with strychnine. Years later, Jane recounted that she clutched her sister lovingly "... and watched with delight as she gasped her life out."
Charles Follen Folsom
She had to fan herself down just hearing about it in court.
But much like Al Capone getting nailed for tax crimes, Jane was undone by her more mundane transgressions. She lived in a Cape Cod residence owned by the Davis family, and when she stopped paying rent, the Davis matriarch came to personally collect, unaware of her tenant's love of poison and poison-related activities. To everyone's surprise but yours, hopefully, Mrs. Davis soon fell ill and died, followed by the other members of her family.
Finally arousing suspicion, Toppan was captured and confessed to 33 murders, blaming it all on the fact that she had no husband or family to keep her busy. Yes, if only she had a bit more laundry to wash, she wouldn't have had to poison a few dozen people to keep busy.
Lowell Sun
"LOL j/k, it was over 100."
17 Juin Media
Like the world's most gut-wrenching Frasier plot, Frenchman Jean-Claude Romand perpetrated an 18-year string of snowballing lies, each more wildly unscrupulous than the last, which finally culminated in his decision to murder his family members in cold succession to "spare them the shameful truth."
Romand wanted a career in medicine, and despite repeatedly failing all of his classes, he managed to land a satisfying, if completely imaginary, role as research scientist at the World Health Organization HQ in Geneva. His lies bled into his personal life when he convinced his on-again, off-again girlfriend Florence to marry him with the ol' "I have cancer" gambit, though his friends and family likely found it suspicious when he never mentioned it again.
17 Juin Media
He preferred to focus on the real killer ... by looking into the mirror.
Up until its bloody crescendo, Romand's day-to-day life was a straight-up sitcom plotline. He spent his days in town, often doing nothing but sitting in his car and reading magazines, other times going on hikes. Romand even occasioned his supposed workplace, where he'd acquire a visitor pass and hang out in the library, write letters, or plan vacations through the in-house booking agent. To maintain the ruse at home, Roman pilfered or bought WHO stationery from the gift shop, and supplied his parents a photo of his office (taken from the outside, of course).
17 Juin Media
"WHO are you?" -- security when he'd try to sneak in
To make ends meet, Romand convinced other members of his family to give him money -- as a high-ranking member of WHO, he could invest their funds at an 18-percent return. Because the World Health Organization includes everything, even the health of your bank account. Ultimately, he scammed his wife's parents out of their retirement, sold her uncle a phony cancer cure, and when those wellsprings dried up, he took a mistress and embezzled from her too.
17 Juin Media
Family values don't stand a chance against dollar values.
On January 9, 1993, Romand decided he couldn't keep up the lies any longer, but rather than come clean, he instead began systematically murdering his family. He bludgeoned his wife with a rolling pin. He poured his kids a farewell bowl of Cocoa Pops, they watched the Three Little Pigs together, then Romand shot them both. He drove to his parents' place and murdered them as well. He tried to kill his mistress, but that, of all things, turned out to be murder he couldn't go through with. He went back to his house and staged a suicide by taking a nonlethal dose of pills and setting a fire, knowing that the firemen would arrive in time to save him. He was sentenced to life in prison in 1996, leaving behind a saga of petty deception and brutal violence that even the most time-crunched SVU producer would reject.
In 2011, 17-year-old Floridian Tyler Hadley told his classmates he was throwing a huge party at his house in Port St. Lucie. One student commented on his Facebook page: "WHAO what if your parents come home."
Tyler replied: "They won't. Trust me."
Tyler popped three tabs of E, cranked Lil' Boosie to hype himself up, and proceeded to brain both of his parents with a claw hammer. He dragged their bodies into the master bedroom, covered them with towels, then jumped on Facebook to confirm that the party was ON.
Port St. Lucie Police
Somewhere in the distance, Andrew W.K. felt a horrific chill run down his spine ...
The party itself was, by all accounts, a real-life Project X affair, with at least a hundred revelers in attendance, even if most only knew Tyler as "that weird kid from school, maybe?" No one knew until long afterward that two bodies were stashed upstairs.
Port St. Lucie Police
They're under all that clutter, if you dare look hard enough.
Eventually, late in the evening, Tyler confided in childhood friend Michael Mandell, who refused to believe it until Tyler showed him the bodies. Mandell called Crime Stoppers, and police quickly arrived, found the corpses, and arrested Tyler.
Tyler Hadley / Facebook
Thankfully, they did so before he could throw another party the day after murdering his parents, because holy s**t.
In jailhouse interviews, Hadley claims to regret the unceremonious slaying of his parents. Yet according to fellow prisoners, he's proudly monikered himself "hammer boy," signs "hammertime" autographs for other inmates, and often fondly recalls the awesomeness of the party. It is not explicitly stated, but we can only assume the other inmates are downright sick of his "I got so hammered" puns.
The years immediately following World War I were not easy for the German populace. In addition to the shame of finishing runner-up in in the most destructive armed conflict in human history to date, the harsh stipulations of the Treaty of Versailles left most people destitute and hungry. If this were an entry on "most innovative meat solutions," perhaps you would be surprised by the following: Some people resorted to cannibalism. This being the article it is, however, it probably takes more to shock you. We're getting there.
Karl Denke from Munsterberg was a well-liked member of the community. Why, he was both a religious and generous man, who even gave people in need a place to stay for a while.
A very long while.
Munsterberg Police Department
The only way they could overstay their welcome is if they developed freezer burn.
After a homeless man showed up in a local police station to complain about the nagging ax wound in his head, Denke was arrested and placed in a holding cell. He promptly committed suicide with a handkerchief, because he knew it was only a matter of time before authorities discovered what he'd been up to: using his apartment / homeless shelter as a human meat-processing facility. Apparently, Denke was making a fairly decent living taking in recently released hospital patients and vagrants (around 40 of them over the course of three to four years) and then de-boning them, pickling the flesh, selling their tastiest bits as pork on the open market, and turning the rest into belts and soap, like a gritty prequel to Tyler Durden.
Munsterberg Police Department
The first rule of Cannibal Club: Do not talk about Cannibal Club with your mouth full.
Carl Friedrich Wilhelm Grossmann also turned his apartment into a meatpacking plant, but he preferred the taste of destitute young women, whom he rendered into steak and sausages to sell from his train station hot dog stand. We don't know if there's really a preconceived "look" to a man who turns other people into sausages, but Carl is sure working it:
via Murderpedia
If this doesn't shatter the "serial killers are charming rogues" stereotype, then nothing will.
Seriously, do not eat at unlicensed sausage stands. We cannot stress how many ways it is a bad idea.
You know all those facts you've learned about psychology from movies and that one guy at the party who says, "Actually ..." a lot? Please forget them. Chances are none of them are true. Take the Stanford Prison Experiment, the one famous psychology study people can name. It was complete bullshit. Funny story actually, it turns out that when you post flyers that say, "Hey, do you wanna be a prison guard for the weekend? Free food and nightsticks," you might not get the most stable group of young men. So join Jack O'Brien, Cracked staff members Dan O'Brien and Michael Swaim, and Psychology Professor Martie G. Haselton of UCLA as they debunk Rorschach tests, the Mozart effec,t and middle child syndrome, so soon you can be that person at the party who says, "Actually ..." Get your tickets here!
For more reasons to never trust anybody, ever, check out 8 Real Craigslist Ads That Were Clearly Written By Murderers and 5 Real Killers More Terrifying Than Any Horror Movie.
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