Serial killer nicknames: How infamous BTK, ‘The Lipstick Killer’, ‘Zodiac Killer’, and ‘The Terminator’ got their names
EVER heard of The Lipstick Killer, Mr Stinky or The Zodiac Killer? Here’s the horrifying truth about how they and other killers got their names.
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YOU may have heard of Mr Stinky, The Lipstick Killer and The Zodiac Killer, but how these killers and more got their names will horrify you.
Mr Stinky
DUBBED “Mr Stinky” due to his offensive body odour, Raymond Edmunds is both a convicted murderer and rapist.
On 10 February 1966, Edmunds murdered 18-year-old Garry Heywood and raped and murdered 16-year-old Abina Madill near Shepparton, but wasn’t captured until years later.
Meanwhile, he committed a series of rapes in the 1970s and 1980s, becoming known as the Donvale Rapist.
In March 1985, Edmunds was arrested on an unrelated charge, and his fingerprints were watched with those found at the scene of Madill and Heywood’s murders.
He pleaded guilty to two counts of murder, three of rape and two of attempted rape, and was sentenced to two terms of life imprisonment.
Edmunds remains a suspect for the murder of Elaine Jones near Tocumwal in 1980.
The Mutilator
AUSTRALIA’S first true serial killer, William MacDonald was born in Liverpool, England in 1924.
He began his killing streak in Brisbane in 1961 with the strangulation of 55-year-old man Amos Hurst.
After moving to Sydney, MacDonald fatally stabbed a further four people.
Three of these victims had had their genitalia removed, with the knife too blunt for him to remove the fourth victim’s.
MacDonald was eventually captured in Melbourne and charged with four counts of murder.
His plea of not guilty on the grounds of insanity was rejected by the jury and he was sentenced to five consecutive life sentences.
MacDonald became the longest continuous serving inmate in the New South Wales prison system, dying in May 2015 while still imprisoned.
The Brownout Strangler
ARRIVING in Melbourne in 1942, US soldier Eddie Leonski wasn’t in the city for long before he went on a murderous rampage.
During the month of May 1942, Leonski strangled three women to death, leaving police baffled.
Given windows, streetlamps and car lights were browned out at night in fear of a Japanese air attack, Leonski had the perfect cover.
He was only discovered after police zeroed in on Camp Pell in Parkville, where he was living at the time, and found yellow clay matching one of the crime scenes on his tent, shoes and bed.
Leonski confessed to the killings and his trial was conducted under American military law.
He was hanged at Pentridge Prison on 9 November 1942, and remains the first and only citizen of another country to be tried and sentenced to death in Australia by a foreign court.
Frankston Serial Killer
DURING a five-month period in 1993, Paul Charles Denyer stalked and attacked several women in and around Frankston.
Denyer is currently serving three consecutive life sentences after strangling, savagely slashing and slitting the throats of three women.
Now going by the name Paula after coming out as a transwoman in 2003, Denyer’s criminal behaviour emerged in childhood.
The Acid Bath Murderer
A NOTORIOUS British serial killer of the 1940s, John George Haigh was convicted of killing six people — but claimed to have killed nine.
He bashed a former boss to death and dissolved the body in acid, and later killed his former boss’s parents to keep the original murder a secret.
After renting a workshop in West Sussex, he shot and killed other wealthy people and dissolved them in barrels of acid.
His motive was said to be purely financial; he took ownership of his victims’ possessions and properties via forged documents after their deaths.
Despite pleading insanity and claiming he drank his victims’ blood, he was hanged for his crimes in August 1949.
The Lipstick Killer
CHICAGO university student William Heirens was a petty burglar who confessed to murdering two women in 1945.
One of the victims was shot. Both were stabbed.
At one of the crime scenes, a message was written on a mirror with lipstick: “For heaven’s sake catch me before I kill more. I cannot control myself.”
From that moment on he was to be known as the feared “Lipstick Killer”.
Heirens also admitted to abducting and killing a 6-year-old girl who was later dismembered in a basement.
Before he died in jail he recanted his confessions, claiming he made admissions after police drugged him, and also to accept a plea deal to avoid the death penalty.
The BTK Killer
DENNIS Rader, a married father who struck fear in the US state of Kansas, murdered 10 people between 1974 and 1991.
A sexually-driven monster, he worked as a city by-laws supervisor: a job which gave him access to yards and homes.
During his murder spree, Rader sent anonymous notes to police and local media in which he called himself the “BTK Killer”.
The acronym stood for: “Bind them. Torture them. Kill them.”
Rader would later describe his victims as nothing more than “objects” he used to fulfil his sick sexual fantasies.
He also bragged about his nickname.
“I embraced it,” he once said.
“I had a label on me. It was like ‘The Green River Killer’ and ‘Son of Sam.’”
The Zodiac Killer
THIS unknown serial killer terrorised northern California during the 1960s.
While officially linked to five murders committed in 1968 and 1969, this boastful killer sent letters to police and newspapers.
His five confirmed victims were either shot or stabbed.
In his last letter he claimed he was responsible for 37 slayings.
In his letters he wrote codes and drew symbols he said could reveal his motives and identity.
He also referred to himself as “The Zodiac Killer”.
A local couple cracked the code, which formed a message about a love of killing and collecting slaves for the afterlife.
His signature was a cross drawn inside a circle.
The Casanova Killer
UNLIKE most classic serial killers, Paul John Knowles — known as the “The Casanova Killer” — was a handsome windswept man who a woman once described as a “cross between Robert Redford and Ryan O’Neal”.
A drifter during the 1970s, Knowles killed his victims — men, women and teens — in different US states using different methods.
He shot, stabbed and strangled his victims, sexually assaulting at least one.
His motivation was said to be infamy.
He was shot dead in 1974 while trying to escape police custody.
The Vampire of Sacramento
RICHARD Trenton Chase, aka “The Vampire of Sacramento”, murdered six people and got his nickname because he drank blood from animals and his victims, and ate some of their remains.
A booze and drug-addicted hypochondriac, he started killing animals and ingesting their organs as he feared his body was failing him and had to be renourished.
A psychiatric patient, he decided he needed more sustenance so started killing people.
Chase shot and killed two women — sexually abusing their bodies before drinking their blood and eating parts of their organs.
He also killed two men and two children.
Much to the relief of his fellow inmates, Chase, also known as “The Dracula Killer”, died in his prison cell in December 1980.
The Scorecard Killer
RANDY Kraft, a Californian serial killer known as “The Scorecard Killer”, has been described as a true psychopath.
A charming, intelligent and ruthless mass murderer, he had a penchant for torture during his shocking spree from 1972 to 1983.
He lulled his victims into a false sense of security with charm and alcohol before mutilating and killing them and dumping them along US highways.
Kraft sits on death row convicted of 16 murders, but some believe he could have killed up to 50 people.
One potential victim who almost fell into Kraft’s clutches once said: “I was struck by how casual, confident and analytic he was”.
“(He said of potential victims), ‘You just have to get them away from their friends.’”
The Green River Killer
ONE of America’s most notorious serial killers, Gary Ridgway pleaded guilty to killing 49 women before, through additional admissions to a journalist, expanding his kill list to 80.
Ridgway confessed to picking up prostitutes and wayward teens in an area of Washington during the 1980s and 1990s and strangling them during sex.
He dumped their bodies in remote areas along the 105km-long Green River, thus earning his nickname.
He pleaded guilty to 48 murders in 2003 after being linked by DNA evidence thanks to new scientific advancements.
The Rostov Ripper
ANDREI Chikatilo, known as “The Rostov Ripper” or “The Red Ripper”, was a Russian serial killer who murdered many people between 1978 and 1990.
He chose mainly young victims and trawled city bus and train stations for potential victims.
Armed with a trademark suitcase containing the tools of his trade — that usually included a knife, towel, rope — he also killed prostitutes and children.
He was convicted in 1992 and executed in 1994 for raping and butchering (and in some cases eating parts of) as many as 52 people.
Sexual gratification was his motive.
The Chessboard Killer
ALSO known as “The Bitsa Park Maniac”, Alexander “The Chessboard Killer” Pichushkin
was found guilty of killing 48 people between 1992 and 2006.
The grocery store assistant may have murdered as many as 60.
He plied his victims with alcohol and either bashed them with a hammer, strangled them or threw them in the Bitsa Park sewer system to drown.
A skilled chess player, he killed men and women and once said life without murder was like life without food.
Russian newspapers branded him the “chessboard killer” because he reportedly hoped to put a coin on every square of a 64-place chessboard for each murder.
The Terminator
ANATOLY Onoprienko, known as “The Terminator” or “Citizen O”, was a Ukrainian mass killer responsible for 52 murders.
A former sailor who worked as a forestry student, Onoprienko was a psychiatric outpatient who killed on a whim.
“It was almost like some game,” he once said.
His random shooting murders included those of families in their homes, eyewitnesses and random motorists.
He bashed and hacked some of his victims.
He stole cash and items from his victims’ homes before burning them down.
Onoprienko died in prison in August 2013 at age 54.
Originally published as Serial killer nicknames: How infamous BTK, ‘The Lipstick Killer’, ‘Zodiac Killer’, and ‘The Terminator’ got their names
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