Infamous Serial Killers Who Were Executed

Although capital punishment is a touchy subject, there are some cases where almost everyone can agree that the death penalty was well deserved. Such is usually the case with serial killers. Their crimes are so appalling and chances of rehabilitation so slim that there seems little else can be done save to execute them. There is also the fact that most serial killers are found guilty beyond a shadow of a doubt and willingly confess their crimes. This is possibly because of the lack of remorse found in virtually all serial killers. In their minds, there is nothing to hide.

Gilles de Rais

Gilles de Rais was a French nobleman and soldier of the Hundred Years War. He came from a powerful family, was wealthy from birth and something of a war hero. None of his good fortune stopped him from becoming a sadistic child killer. Gilles de Rais confessed to sodomizing, torturing and killing more children than he could recall. When questioned, he said that he had lost count. He was also suspected of cannibalizing some of the boys he killed.

Some scholars question the guilt of Gilles de Rais, given the nature of confessions given under torture or the threat of torture. Gilles de Rais gave both. He confessed before and during his torture. He was found guilty of his crimes, as were some of his accomplices, who had helped him lure children and hide their bodies. Gilles de Rais was hanged on October 26, 1440.

Ted Bundy

Ted Bundy is one of the most infamous serial killers in American history. This is largely because of his charisma and love of attention. He was so despicable and unrepentant that he made a mockery of his own murder trial by proposing to a woman in the midst of it. Shockingly, she said yes, despite the fact that the man who proposed to her was on trial for the rape, torture and murder of around 30 women (to which he confessed). He was also guilty of necrophilia.

During his incarceration for his first string of murders, Ted Bundy managed to escape. During his time out of jail, he went on another killing spree that involved his most heinous crime yet, the rape and murder of a 12-year-old girl. He was caught and eventually found guilty of his crimes. He was executed by electric chair on January 24, 1989.

Andrei Chikatilo

Andrei Chikatilo, or the Rostov Ripper, was born in the Ukraine in 1936. This was one of the worst times to be a Ukrainian. Stalin's brand of communism had left the country in ruins. Citizens were starving to death by the millions. Rumors that some resorted to cannibalism persist to this day. Did this have anything to do with the man Andre would become? Only he knows, but the fact is that countless children were born into the same horror and they did not turn out like Chikatilo.

Andrei committed his first murder in December of 1978. His victim was a 9-year-old girl, but you could say he had one more victim - the man who was executed for this murder. Andrei continued to kill young women, girls and boys until he was caught in November of 1990. He sexually assaulted his victims as well, but he was sexually impotent in some ways, so sometimes used a knife instead.

Chikatilo eventually confessed to killing 56 people. Fifty-three of these murders were confirmed. Andrei also confessed to cannibalizing his victims. He was executed by a bullet to the back of his skull on February 14, 1994.

Albert Fish

The pure evil of Albert Fish can be summed up in one quote of his, "I like children. They are tasty." To his victims and the police who finally captured him, Albert Fish looked like a harmless old man, but his appearance belied his monstrous interior. He became known as the Boogey Man and he certainly was the Boogey Man of New York.

Children who were tricked into accompanying Albert Fish never made it home to their parents. He would take them, beat them, torture them sadistically and then cut them into parts for eating. This is as much as anyone needs to know about Albert Fish. The details of his crimes are so sickening as to be unspeakable. Unfortunately, he did not think so. A few years after kidnapping Grace Budd right from the house of her unsuspecting parents, Fish wrote her poor mother a letter explaining the crime in gruesome detail. The language of the letter was crude and offensive. The only consolation she could have derived from the horrid letter is that Albert claimed he did not rape her daughter before killing and eating her.

Albert Fish confessed to killing "at least a hundred" children. Some of them he raped and sexually abused. The sadist in him enjoyed torture, even on himself. He made claims that he shoved needles into his private areas because the pain gave him pleasure. To test this claim, he was given an x-ray. It revealed numerous needles inside of his body. There was no doubt of his guilt. On January 16, 1936, Albert Fish was executed by electric chair.

John Wayne Gacy

John Wayne Gacy was a community-oriented man who even dressed as a clown for children's birthday parties. However, in his spare time, he lured young men and boys into his house, raped and murdered them. His home in Illinois reeked of the bodies rotting under it, but friends and neighbors did not suspect the truth of the awful stench.

Part of Gacy's act was to get boys to live with him under the pretense that he would give them work and a place to stay. Sometimes he did, for a while, but then he would be unable to control himself or maybe he never even tried to control himself. A few of his victims escaped his grasp, but were too traumatized to remember their attacker.

Police finally caught on to Gacy and raided his house. Inside, they found 28 corpses rotting in the crawl space. There was no denying his guilt. John Wayne Gacy was executed by lethal injection on May 10, 1994. Rumor has it that his execution was botched. Therefore, it was longer and more painful than most executions by lethal injections. Did Gacy deserve such a painful death? That is a matter of opinion.

H.H. Holmes

H.H. Holmes was an American serial killer whose life of crime centered on being a con man. He would relieve people of their money in any way possible. When he discovered that killing people only helped his con-man career, he embarked on a life of serial killing.

Holmes' home in Chicago, Illinois was made into what is now known as the "Murder Castle." He constructed additions to the house that enabled him to move bodies around it without anyone else in the house knowing what he was doing. It was like a house out of a Sherlock Holmes novel, but far more sinister.

How many people H.H. Holmes killed in his Murder Castle is unknown. In fact, he got away with it while he was doing it. It was not until after he was arrested for insurance fraud that police realized he had killed a man in an insurance scam. From there, it was only too obvious that H.H. Holmes' crimes extended far beyond that. He was hanged for his crimes on May 7, 1896.

Donald Henry "Pee Wee" Gaskins

Donald Henry Gaskins dropped out of high school and immediately set off on a life of crime and incarceration. He was allegedly raped numerous times during his first stint in jail. He slit the throat of one of his rapists and was given an additional nine years jail time. One year after he was let out, he was arrested for the rape of a 12-year-old girl and jailed again. On parole, he killed and raped a pregnant woman, his own niece and an infant, among an unknown amount of other victims.

By the time Pee Wee was caught, he had committed at least eight murders, though he confessed to around 100. He was eventually found guilty of the eight confirmed murders. He was executed by electric chair on September 6, 1991.

Some may argue that executing a person is simple perpetuating the cycle of violence. This is true, in the simplest of senses. However, there is no denying that our streets and prisons are safer without these men in them. The question really is, is it right to commit one act of violence to stop the flow of a much greater number of violent acts?

Sources

Chua-Eon, Howard, John Wayne Gacy, retrieved 3/15/11, time.com/time/2007/crimes/13.html

Donald "Pee Wee" Gaskins, retrieved 3/15/11, findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cg?page=gr&GRid=7093895

Bardsley, Marilyn, Albert Fish, retrieved 3/15/11, trutv.com/library/crime/serial-killers/notorious/fish/index.html

Andrei Chikatilo, retrieved 3/15/11, biography.com/notorious/crimefiles.do?catId=259456&action=view&profileId=268268&selectedIndex=1§ionName=Biography

Chua-Eoan, Howard, Ted Bundy, retrieved 3/15/11, time.com/time/2007/crimes/14.html