When you’re best known for being a crazed mass murderer, pretty much anything you do is creepy – “Oh my god, look. He’s eating with chopsticks. That is SO creepy.” However, the gentlemen and ladies on this list take things to a new level with the sheer creeposity of their day-jobs. Peruse this list, if you dare, and start suspecting everyone.
Donald Henry Gaskins
The fact that Donald Henry Gaskins, who murdered anywhere between nine and one hundred people (based on varied accounts), was nicknamed Pee Wee is already really creepy. When you consider this in concert with the fact that he spent a good portion of his days working in a carnival, the creep-o factor goes right through the roof. It’s going to be hard to ever look at the ring-toss guy the same again. While in jail, Gaskins decided he might as well use his life sentence to his advantage by entertaining himself with yet another brutal murder. He used a radio device rigged with C4 and a remote detonator to kill fellow inmate Rudolph Tyner, and was subsequently sentenced to death — because apparently murdering dozens of innocent people only gets you life, but killing a fellow murderer is a real no-no.
Ted Bundy
Ted Bundy was one of the most famous and infamous serial killers in American history. He was eventually convicted of his crimes and executed after confessing to over 35 murders. Unlike many of the serial killers on this list, Bundy was a more-than-proficient student in both high school and college, earning a degree in psychology from the University of Washington. Bundy spent a good part of his college years working for a suicide prevention hotline. “No, no, don’t kill yourself. That would be a waste of a perfectly good life, my dear.” One of the biggest monsters of the 20th century took on the responsibility of showing care and kindness to lonely souls in need, all while studying the science of the human mind. We now know what he was preparing to use those skills for.
John Wayne Gacy, Jr.
John Wayne Gacy was responsible for 33 murders by the time he was caught in 1978 — just two shy of Bundy. Not to be outdone, Gacy decided to have an even creepier profession than Bundy: an amateur clown for children’s parties. This fact alone pretty much fulfills the nightmares of the already significant clown-fearing quota of the population, which is not to be underestimated. A large number of Gacy’s victims were teenage boys; Gacy often hosted block parties during which he would take on the alter ego of ‘Pogo the Clown,’ because it seems ‘Psycho Killer the Clown’ was already taken. Come to think of it, Insane Clown Posse really needs to reconsider their level of insanity.
Harold Shipman
There has always been a bit of a rivalry between Britain and the United States, and the serial killing racket is no exception to this. Dr. Harold Shipman (that should give away his profession) is suspected to have committed more than 215 murders in his time as a physician, far outstripping any American murderer. To this date, Shipman is the only British Doctor to be found guilty of murdering his patients, but he did enough killing to be labeled with the ‘serial killer’ moniker 20 times over. During his trial, the British media very cleverly dubbed him Dr. Death, highlighting the horror his ruthless nature, as well as the ease with which Shipman was able to commit his crimes due to the trust imbued in individuals of his profession.
Donald Harvey
Donald Harvey committed anywhere between 36 and 57 murders while working as a medical orderly. According to the God of knowledge, Wikipedia, a medical orderly’s duties include ‘assisting medical and/or nursing staff with various nursing and/or medical interventions. These duties are classified as routine tasks involving no risk for the patient.’ Yeah, they’re definitely no risk tasks as long as the person carrying them out isn’t a total nut job. Harvey killed patients in a vast number of ways including arsenic poisoning, suffocation, and inserting a coat hanger into a catheter. Harvey’s murders took place in three different hospitals across two states. At the last of these three hospitals, Harvey earned the nickname ‘The Angel of Death’ since his patients kept ‘coincidentally’ dying under his care. It took 17 years for any of the docs to bat an eyelid and catch on to his murderous antics. It just goes to show: just because you’re a brain surgeon doesn’t mean you’re a rocket scientist.
Miyuki Ishikawa
Yet another member of the medical profession was Miyuki Ishikawa, a female midwife and serial murderer. Ishikawa worked in Japan during the second world war and did exactly what you’re already expecting: she was a baby killer. Miyuki Ishikawa murdered an estimated 103 infants during her time as a midwife in Tokyo, mainly through intentional neglect. Ishikawa’s methods disgusted her fellow midwifes enough that they resigned from their positions, but didn’t bother to alert the authorities. Perhaps the biggest injustice is the fact that in the end, this brutal child-killer was only sentenced to a paltry eight years in jail. File this one under the voluminous annals of ‘WTF Japan?’
Dean Corll and Jeffrey Dahmer
Dean Corll and Jeffrey Dahmer, who claimed 27 and 17 victims respectively, have more in common than simply falling in the lowest category of human life: they both worked for candy companies during their days off from committing gruesome murders. Similar to Gacy’s clowning around, this is particularly disgusting — we associate candy with childhood and innocence, and then these two freaks have to come along plant R rated thoughts of macabre scenes where they don’t belong. Corll worked for his family’s company, the Corll Candy Company, whose offices were directly opposite a high school. He was known for giving free candy to the students — especially male teenage boys — who would later constitute the main demographic of his victims. Jeffrey Dahmer worked for a chocolate factory in Milwaukee for several years while casually murdering people and then eating or keeping their remains. We’d prefer the chocolate.
Delfina and María de Jesús González
Delfina and María de Jesús González may have the name ‘Jesus’ in there somewhere, but don’t let that fool you; they were huge assholes. The two sisters ran a brothel known as Rancho El Ángel (maybe because going there would mean you’d soon be playing a harp alongside them) situated about 200 miles north of Mexico City. These two women were responsible for over 91 murders — 80 women, 11 men, and a number of fetuses, all of which were found on the property following a police search. The sisters recruited prostitutes through help-wanted ads by pretending they needed a maid and then force-feeding the applicants drugs such as heroin. When they tired of the girl or she she began to fight back, they killed her. Don’t get them wrong though… They were also opportunists, killing men who stopped by the brothel with large sums of money.
Andrei Chikatilo
Andrei Chikatilo was a Russian serial killer who claimed an astonishing 53 victims over a 13-year period between 1978 and 1990. All of his murders were of women and children. He was nicknamed the ‘Red Ripper’ because of the brutality of his crimes, and when Chikatilo wasn’t visiting absolute atrocities upon his fellow Russians, he spent his time as a teacher of Russian language and literature in Novoshakhtinsk but was eventually fired after multiple instances of child molestation against his pupils. Chikatilo may be one the of the sickest people on this list; he suffered from severe impotence for most of his life and found that he could only ejaculate while knifing a young victim to death.
Robert William Pickton
Robert William Pickton was determined to show the world that the fellas up in Canada could be just as sick and sadistic as their American brothers. The majority of Pickton’s victims — who totaled at least 27 — were prostitutes who Pickton had hired to entertain guests at ‘non-profit events’ at his pig farm. After he murdered a woman, he would store the body at his pig farm, which is currently still fenced-off by police due to the fact that ‘forensic analysis is very difficult because the bodies of the victims may have been left to decompose or allowed to be eaten by insects and pigs on the farm.’ According to authorities, the flesh of Pickton’s victims may have been ground up with that of the pigs on his farm. Luckily for the average consumer, the meat was never distributed, but it was given to people who visited Pickton on his farm. Vacation to Canada, anyone?
Norman Afzal Simons
South Africans don’t just have funny accents, they can also gruesomely rape and murder people. Norman Afzal Simons tortured, raped and murdered 22 young boys between 1986 and 1994, using his job as an elementary school teacher to get close enough to the children to be able to lure them away from train stations. Simons claimed that he was sodomized by his older stepbrother when he was young, and that it was his stepbrother’s voice that instructed him to commit his horrible crimes. Simons is another example of a serial killer who is of above average intelligence and therefore does not arouse as much suspicion because of both his affluence and the ability to mask his horrific dysfunctions.
Dennis Nilsen
Dennis Nilsen is a British serial killer often referred to as the ‘British Jeffrey Dahmer’. He claimed a total 15 victims — all men and boys, the majority of which were students and the homeless. Nilsen served as both an officer in the British Army and a Member of London’s Metropolitan Police. During his time in the army, Nilsen often took on the role of the platoon’s cook and learned quite a bit about butchery, a skill set that would come in handy later. Nilsen was only caught after plumbers, whom he hired to fix his blocked drains, discovered that they were clogged with human flesh and notified the authorities.
Jack Unterweger
Jack Unterweger was a cold-blooded Austrian murderer who was originally jailed for his murder of 18-year-old Margaret Schäfer, a young girl he strangled to death with her own bra. He was sentenced to life in prison, and that’s where the story should have ended. If it weren’t for a pack of ‘intellectuals and politicians’ who campaigned for his release, citing him as a shining example of prisoner rehabilitation, it absolutely would have. After he was released from incarceration in 1990, Unterweger began hosting a television program that discussed prisoner rehabilitation and all the wonders it could bring. You know, like a string of 14 more innocent people being murdered before being recaptured. Nice work, ‘intellectuals.’
Fred West
Fred West and his insane wife Rosemary were a British couple responsible for the brutal murder of anywhere between 11 and 13 girls and young women before they were eventually apprehended in 1994. Fred held many odd jobs after dropping out of school, but by far the creepiest of these was his job as an ice-cream truck driver. During his time driving around England and passing out delicious frozen treats, he managed to run over a four-year-old boy, killing him. This death was eventually ruled an accident. Not so accidental were the other killings, which often included rape and torture. West was even known to rape his own daughters while his sadistic wife watched and egged him on. He eventually hung himself in prison. Good riddance.
Aileen Wuornos
Aileen Wuornos is well known as the subject of the Academy Award-Winning film Monster, the only movie that could make Charlize Theron look ugly. Looking at a photo of Wuornos, you get the distinct impression that when she talks she’d sound like Ms Crabtree from South Park. She was one creepy lady. Wuornos was convicted of six counts of murder, but is known to have murdered seven men before being apprehended. When she wasn’t viciously murdering men (and sometimes when she was) Aileen worked as a prostitute, and this is often how she first became acquainted with her victims. On October 9, 2002, Aileen Wuornos was executed by lethal injection at the age of 46.
