In the words of a doctor who treated Albert Fish, "There was no known perversion which he did not practice and practice frequently". Indeed, Fish could be described as everything evil, compacted and rolled into a bundle.

Fish was born in Washington, D.C. in 1870. By the age of five he was abandoned after the death of his father, and spent the majority of the rest of his childhood in an orphanage. Managing to carve out a life that seemed somwhat normal, Fish married in 1898 and fathered six children. His eccentric and perverted behavior evidently lay beneath the surface of a normal family man until his wife left him for another man in 1917. Alone and faced with the responsibility of caring for his children alone, his true self began to emerge. Reportedly, he occasionally would screm into the sky "I am Christ!" and forced his own children to paddle him until he bled. Later on, living with his grown son Albert Jr., he admitted that he used the nail-studded paddles his boy found in his father's room on himself, citing the need to torture himself. He also collected literature on cannabilism and other bizarre subjects.

Fish took to answering ads placed in the newspapers by single women, though definitely not in the fashion they desired. He wrote the ladies back with obscene proposals, which included having them paddle him. Just this sort of behavior landed Fish in minor trouble with the law, but he was largely regarded as just a nuisance. Nobody imagined that he was a sadistic killer until 1928.

On June 3 of that year Fish took 12-year-old Grace Budd to his isolated cottage in White Plains, New York from her home in New York City. Once there he strangled the helpless girl, decapitated her and used a saw to cut her in half. He ate bits of her flesh in a stew later and drank some of the girl's blood. The Budd's, who allowed their daughter to go to a fictitious birthday party with the killer they knew as Frank Howard, never heard anything about here daughter until Fish inexplicably sent them a letter telling them he had killed their daughter, adding that he "didn't fuck with her" and that she died a virgin. An address that Fish had not erased well enough on the back of the letter's envelope led police to the old man and the child killer was immediately arrested.

Because of the passage of time and lack of follow up that is customary nowadays, it is uncertain exactly what killings Fish actually confessed to while in custody. He evidently laid some claim to a few killings including the 1910 killing of a man in Delaware, the torture and mutilation death of a retarded boy in 1919,and the killing of a twelve-year-old boy in 1917. He alluded to many others but his confessions were never truly verified and he himself admitted his memory had deteriorated in his last few years. He reportedly admitted to the molestation of approximately 400 children, and incredibly horrifying number if true.

E.E. worked as an electician, but he had been a hero in the war, serving in the special forces unit in Europe, he loved to collect guns and other weapons; the family home was full of them. Young Ed hero-worshipped him. In 1957, his parents split-up, and his mother went to live in Montana. Ed missed his father and became clinging and emotional. Clarnell deciced he needed toughening up (she feared he would grow up homosexual) and took to putting him in the basement every night. This went on for eight months before E.E. briefly came back home and stopped her doing it.

When he was nine he killed the family cat by burying it alive in the back garden, then he dug it up, cut off it's head and mounted it on a stick. He kept the grisly relic in his bedroom, where he prayed to it. He had fantasies of murdering dozens of people, all at once and one at a time. he liked to dream about carrying off their bodys, like trophies that he could love and cherish. He would often cut-up his sister's dolls, while his schoolmates objected to the way he would sit and stare at them. Despite his size, he was seen as a weakling and a coward.

Kemper was 15 when he killed for the first time. His victims were his father's parents, with whom he was staying on their farm at North Fork, high in california's Sierra Mountains. Ed was sitting in the kitchen with his grandmother, she got snappy because he was staring at her, so he picked up his rifle and went out to kill something. As he went out she called after him not to shoot any birds. He turned and shot her in the head, then twice more in the back. As he dragged her body in the bedroom, he heard his grandfather's car outside. Ed watched him get out, then killed him with a single shot. He later told police "I just wondered how it would feel to shoot Grandma". He never came to trial and was declared insane, a paranoid schizophrenic. On 6 December 1964, just a few days short of 16 years old, he was remaned to a hospital for the criminally insane.

When they let Ed Kemper out of hospital, they told him not to move back in with his mother. The doctors thought she was the source of most of his problems. Still he moved back to his mother's house, where they argued excessively. Saving enough money, Ed moved out and headed north, to Alameda near San Francisco, where he shared a rented flat with a friend. He spent most of his time cruising around the California highways, stopping to pick up young female hitch-hikers.

On May 7, 1972, Kemper picked up two 18-year-old college students, Mary Anne Pesce and Anita Luchessa. They were going to Stanford University, no more than an hours drive away. Ed Kemper parked on a dirt road and told the girls he was taking them back to his apartment, then murdered them in the car. Knowing his flat mate was out he took the bodies, wrapped in blankets, to his room, where he dismembered them, taking photographs from time to time. His next victim's head 15-year-old Aiko Koo was in the boot of the car when he drove to Fresco for a meeting with a couple of court psychiatrists. They were so pleased with his progress that they recommended his juvenile record be sealed.

There were several more killings before Ed decided to "demonsrate to the authorities", as he later put it, "that he was not a man to be trifled with". On April 20, Ed drove to Aptos to see his mother. She had gone out straight from work, so Ed sat drinking and watching TV. She finally turned up around 4 a.m. He talked to her briefly, then returned to his bed and lay there till around five, when he was sure she was asleep. He crept in with a hammer and a penknife, watched her sleep for a while, then brought the hammer down on her temple with all the force he could muster. He then slit her throat, and removed her head before cleaning up. Afterwards he phoned Sally Hallet, a women in her late fifties, who was a friend of his mother. Luring her to the house he then murdered and beheaded her before going to bed.

It was Ed Kemper himself who later phoned police to confess to the killings. Which at first was thought to be a crank caller. He was later arrested by armed officers.

Once Kemper had started to talk, there was no stopping him. He waived his right to an attorney and began to confess, in meticulous detail, to all the killings. When finished he even went out with detectives shadowed at a distance by a group of reporters to show them where he had hidden those parts of his victims that hadn't already turned up.

After pleading insanity, on November 8, 1973 he was found guilty of 8 counts of first degree murder and sentenced to life imprisonment. The judge recommended that he should never be set free but this did not disturb Kemper. Before his trial he said he had confessed because he needed help and that in jail he'd be "locked up in a little room, where I can't hurt anybody and I'd be left to my fantasies." There was no appeal.

Brady was born in Glasgow, the illegitimate son of a waitress. He never Knew his father and was brought up by foster parents in the tough poverty-ridden tenements of the Gorbals. When he was 18, Brady was placed in a special Borstal unit for offenders of above-average intelligence, but when he was caught making alcohol he was transferred to a much tougher Borstal in Hull, from which he emerged a totally warped character.

Hindley was a local girl, born and brought up in the industrial suburb of Gorton. She was average in every way and failed to do well at school. In her early teens she took to the Catholic faith, regularly attending mass.

When they met Brady was well on the way to being a full-blown psycopath. He had a private library of books about torture and rutual killings, his favourite being the works of Marquis de Sade.

By 1963 Brady was talking openly about his fascination with commiting the perfect murder. On 12 July he told Hindley, now totally obedient to him, that the time had come. Their plan was to tour the side-streets of the Manchester suburbs to find someone to kill. It didn't matter if it was a male or female. As long as the victim was young, Brady was happy. Hindley was to cruise the residential roads in a borrowed van while Brady followed on his motorbike. When he spotted a likely victim he would flash his lights as a signal. Hindley was to stop and lure the victim into the van on the promise of a reward for helping her find an expensive glove lost at a picnic on the Moors a few days before.

In July 1963 they picked up sixteen year old Pauline Reade who was a neighbour of Myra's. They drove to the Moors and pulled into a lay-by at a local beauty spot popular with courting couples and picknickers. There Hindley introduced Pauline to Brady as her boyfriend. Brady told Hindley to drive the van to a better parking place while he and Pauline walked on to the Moor away from the road to start looking for the glove. There Brady suddenly sexually assaulted the off-guard teenager, then slit her throat with a knife. After burying the body of Pauline Reade in a make shift grave. He loaded his motorcycle into the back of the van and the couple drove away from the scene of their first dreadful deed.

By November Brady was tingling with the urge to kill again. He told Hindley "it is time to do another one". This time it was 12 year old John Kilbride who they picked up from a store. The boy was strangled with a piece of string and then sexually assaulted before being buried in the boggy soil.

Boxing Day 1964, Hindley and Brady picked up 10-year-old Lesley Ann from a fairground in the Miles Platting district of Manchester. The couple had recently moved into a new house on a large council estate in the Manchester suburb of Hattersley. It was here were Brady recorded the poor girls agonizing cries begging him not to hurt her, as he forced her to strip and pose for pornographic pictures of the vilest nature, which burn't into the memories of all who heard and seen them. He had planned to pedal the pictures to child sex perverts. At the end of the photo session Brady told Hindley to run a bath so they could "clean the girl up". Hindley later told detectives that she waited in the bathroom for about 20 minutes and when Brady didn't bring the girl in she went back to the bedroom to be confronted by a horrific sight. Lesley Ann Downey was lying half on and half off the bed; Brady had raped and strangled her.

Ian Brady and Myra Hindley were arrested on the morning of October 7, 1965. Police went to the house that the killers shared were they found the body of Edward Evans. Although only suspected at the time of the murder of Evans a thorough search of the house turned up a number of clues that pointed to more victims. Soon Police were tying in Brady and Hindley to several disappearances. The two killers denied all charges, even as overwhelming evidence built up against them. The trial began on 19 April, 1966. In jail on remand both had to be held in solitary confinement under permanent guard after other prisoners swore they would lynch them. And following anonymous threats to shoot them even as they stood trial, the dock surrounding the couple was encased in four-inch thick, bullet-proof glass.

Ian Brady was sentenced to three life terms, while Hindley was sentenced to two life terms plus an additional seven years. Hanging for murder had been abolished only a few months earlier.

Brady said to suffer from paranoid psychosis, later confessed to five more murders, but police have not been able to substantiate his claims. Hindley has failed several times to be released early.

Americas future media monster was born Aileen Pittman in Rochester, Michigan, on February 29, 1956. Her teenage parents separated months before she was born, father Leo Pittman moving on to serve time in Kansas and Michigan mental hospitals as a deranged child-molester. Mother Diane recalls Aileen and her older brother Keith as crying, unhappy babies, and their racket prompted her to leave them with her parents in early 1960. On March 18 of that year, maternal grandparents Lauri and Britta Wuornos legally adopted the children as their own. Aileens childhood showed little improvement from there. At age six, she suffered scarring facial burns while she and Keith were setting fires with lighter fluid. Aileen later told police that she had sex with Keith at an early age, but acquaintances doubt the story and Keith is unable to speak for himself, having died of throat cancer in 1976. At any rate, Aileen was clearly having sex with someone, for she turned up pregnant in her fourteenth year, delivering her son at a Detroit maternity home on March 23, 1971. Grandmother Britta died on July 7, and while her death was blamed on liver failure, Diane Pratt suspected her father of murder, claiming he threatened to kill Aileen and Keith if they were not removed from his home. In fact, they became wards of the court, Aileen soon dropping out of school to work the streets full-time, earning her way as a teenage hooker, drifting across country as the spirit moved her.

In May 1974, using the alias Sandra Kretsch, she was jailed in Jefferson County, Colorado, for disorderly conduct, drunk driving, and firing a .22-caliber pistol from a moving vehicle. Additional charges of failure to appear were filed when she skipped town ahead of her trial. Back in Michigan on July 13, 1976, Aileen was arrested in Antrim County for simple assault and disturbing the peace, after she lobbed a cue ball at a bartenders head. Out-standing warrants from Troy, Michigan, were also served on charges of driving without a license and consuming alcohol in a motor vehicle. On August 4, Aileen settled her debt to society with a $105 fine. The money came, at least indirectly, from her brother. Keiths death, on July 17, 1976, surprised her with a life insurance payment of $10,000, squandered within two months on luxuries including a new car, which Aileen promptly wrecked. In late September, broke again, she hitched a ride to Florida, anxious to sample a warmer climate, hoping to practice her trade in the sun. It was a change of scene, but Aileens attitude was still the same, and she inevitably faced more trouble with the law. On May 20, 1981, Wuornos was arrested in Edgewater, Florida, for armed robbery of a convenience store. Sentenced to prison on May 4, 1982, she was released thirteen months later, on June 30, 1983. Her next arrest, on May 1, 1984, was for trying to pass forged checks at a bank in Key West. On November 30, 1985, named as a suspect in the theft of a pistol and ammunition in Pasco County, Aileen borrowed the alias Lori Grody from an aunt in Michigan. Eleven days later, the Florida Highway Patrol cited Grody for driving without a valid license. On January 4, 1986, Aileen was arrested in Miami under her own name, charged with auto theft, resisting arrest, and obstruction by false information; police found a .38-caliber revolver and a box of ammunition in the stolen car. On June 2, 1986, Volusia County deputies detained Lori Grody for questioning after a male companion accused her of pulling a gun in his car and demanding $200; in spite of her denials, Aileen was carrying spare ammunition on her person, and a .22 pistol was found beneath the passenger seat she occupied. A week later, using the new alias of Susan Blahovec, she was ticketed for speeding in Jefferson County, Florida. The citation includes a telling observation: Attitude poor. Thinks she is above the law. A few days after the Jefferson County incident, Aileen met lesbian Tyria Moore in a Daytona gay bar. They soon became lovers, and while the passion faded in a year or so, they remained close friends and traveling companions, more or less inseparable for the next four years. On July 4, 1987, police in Daytona Beach detained Tina Moore and Susan Blahovec for questioning, on suspicion of slugging a man with a beer bottle. Blahovec was alone on December 18, when highway patrolmen cited her for walking on the inter-state and possessing a suspended drivers license. Once again, the citation noted Attitude POOR, and Susan proved it over the next two months, with threatening letters mailed to the circuit court clerk on January 11 and February 9, 1988.

A month later, Wuornos was trying a new approach and a new alias. On March 12, 1988, Cammie Marsh Green accused a Daytona Beach bus driver of assault, claiming he pushed her off the bus following an argument; Tyria Moore was listed as a witness to the incident. On July 23, a Daytona Beach landlord accused Moore and Susan Blahovec of vandalizing their apartment, ripping out carpets and painting the walls dark brown without his permission. In November 1988, Susan Blahovec launched a six-day campaign of threatening calls against a Zephyr Hills supermarket, following an altercation over lottery tickets. By 1989, Aileens demeanor was increasingly erratic and belligerent. Never one to take an insult lightly, she now went out of her way to provoke confrontations, seldom traveling without a loaded pistol in her purse. She worked the bars and truck stops, thumbing rides to snag a trick when all else failed, supplementing her prostitutes income with theft when she could. Increasingly, with Moore, she talked about the many troubles in her life, a yearning for revenge. Richard Mallory, a 51-year-old electrician from Palm Harbor, was last seen alive by coworkers on November 30, 1989. His car was found abandoned at Ormond Beach, in Volusia County, the next day, his wallet and personal papers scattered nearby, along with several condoms and a half-empty bottle of vodka. On December 13, his fully-dressed corpse was found in the woods northwest of Daytona Beach, shot three times in the chest with a .22 pistol. Police searching for a motive in the murder learned that Mallory had been divorced five times, earning himself a reputation as a heavy drinker who was very paranoid and very much into porno and the topless-bar scene. A former employee described him as mental, but police came up empty in their search for a criminal record. They could find nothing dirty on the victim, finally concluding he was just paranoid and pussy-crazy. The investigation was stalled at that point on June 1, 1990, when a nude John Doe victim was found, shot six times with a .22 and dumped in the woods forty miles north of Tampa. By June 7, the corpse had been identified from dental records as 43-year-old David Spears, last seen leaving his Sarasota workplace on May 19. Spears had planned to visit his ex-wife in Orlando that afternoon, but he never made it. Ironically, his boss had spotted the dead mans missing pickup truck on May 25, parked along I-75 south of Gainesville, but there the trail went cold. By the time Spears was identified, a third victim had already been found. Charles Carskaddon, age forty, was a part-time rodeo worker from Booneville, Missouri, missing since May 31. He had vanished somewhere along I-75, en route from Booneville to meet his fiancée in Tampa, his naked corpse found thirty miles south of the Spears murder site on June 6. Carskaddon had been shot nine times with a .22-caliber weapon, suggesting a pattern to officers who still resisted the notion of a serial killer at large. On June 7, Carskaddons car was found in Marion County, a .45 automatic and various personal items listed as stolen from the vehicle. Peter Siems, a 65-year-old merchant seaman turned missionary, was last seen on June 7, 1990, when he left his Jupiter, Florida, home to visit relatives in Arkansas. Siems never arrived, and a missing-person report was filed with police on June 22. No trace of the man had been found by July 4, when his car was wrecked and abandoned in Orange Springs, Florida. Witnesses described the vehicles occupants as two women, one blond and one brunette, providing police sketch artists with a likeness of each. The blond was injured, bleeding, and a bloody palm print was lifted from the vehicles trunk.

Eugene Burress, age fifty, left the Ocala sausage factory where he worked to make his normal delivery rounds on July 30, 1990. A missing-person report was filed when he had not returned by 2:00 A.M. the next day, and his delivery van was found two hours later. On August 4, his fully-dressed body was found by a family picnicking in the Ocala National Forest. Burress had been shot twice with a .22-caliber pistol, in the back and chest. Nearby, police found his credit cards, clipboard, business receipts, and an empty cash bag from a local bank. Fifty-six-year-old Dick Humphreys was a retired Alabama police chief, lately employed by the Florida Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services to investigate child abuse claims in Ocala. His wife reported him missing when he failed to return home from work on the night of September 11, 1990, and Humphreys was found the next day in an undeveloped subdivision, shot seven times with a .22 pistol, his pants pockets turned inside-out. On September 19, his car was found abandoned, stripped of license plates, behind a defunct service station in Live Oak. Impounded on September 25, the car was not traced to Humphreys until October 13, the same day his discarded badge and other personal belongings were found in Lake County, seventy miles southeast of the murder scene. Victim number seven was 60-year-old Walter Antonio, a truck driver from Merrit Island who doubles as a reserve police officer for Brevard County. Found in the woods northwest of Cross City on November 19, 1990, he had been shot three times in the back and once in the head. Antonio was nude except for socks, his clothes later found in a remote area of neighboring Taylor County. His car, meanwhile, was found back in Brevard County on November 24. Police determined that Antonios killer had stolen a distinctive gold ring, along with his badge, nightstick, handcuffs, and flash-light. By that time, journalists had noted the obvious pattern detectives were reluctant to accept, and media exposure forced authorities to go public with their suspect sketches on November 30, 1990. Over the next three weeks, police received four calls identifying the nameless women as Tyria Moore and Lee Blahovec. Their movements were traced through motel receipts, detectives learning that Blahovec also liked to call herself Lori Grody and Cammie Marsh Green. Fingerprint comparisons did the rest, naming Blahovec/Grody/Green as Aileen Wuornos, placing her at the scene where Peter Siemss car was wrecked in July, but it still remained for officers to track the women down. Meanwhile, Cammie Green was busy pawning items stolen from her victims, pocketing some extra cash.

On December 6, she pawned Richard Mallorys camera and radar detector in Daytona, moving on to Ormond Beach with a box of tools stolen from Richard Spears. (She also left a thumb print behind in Ormond Beach, identical to that of Lori Grody.) The next day, in Volusia County, Green pawned Walter Antonios ring, later identified by his fiancée and the jeweler who sized it. With mug shots and a list of names in hand, it was a relatively simple matter to trace Aileen Wuornos, though her root-less life style delayed the arrest for another month. On January 9, 1991, she was seized at the Last Resort, a biker bar in Harbor Oaks, detained on outstanding warrants for Lori Grody while police finished building their murder case. A day later Tyria Moore was traced to her sisters home in Pennsylvania, where she agreed to help police. Back in Florida, detectives arranged a series of telephone conversations between Moore and Wuornos, Tyria begging Aileen to confess for Moores sake, to spare her from prosecution as an accomplice. One conversation led police to a storage warehouse Aileen had rented, a search revealing tools stolen from David Spears, the nightstick taken from Walter Antonio, another camera and electric razor belonging to Richard Mallory.

On January 16, 1991, Wuornos summoned detectives and confessed six killings, all allegedly performed in self-defense. She denied killing Peter Siems, whose body was still missing, and likewise disclaimed any link to the murder of a John Doe victim shot to death with a .22-caliber weapon in Brooks County, Georgia, found in an advanced state of decay on May 5, 1990. (No charges were filed in that case.) I shot em cause to me it was like a self-defending thing, she told police, because I felt if I didnt shoot em and didnt kill em, first of all ... if they had survived, my ass would be gettin in trouble for attempted murder, so Im up shits creek on that one anyway, and if I didnt kill em, you know, of course, I mean I had to kill em ... or its like retaliation, too. Its like, You bastards, you were going to hurt me. Within two weeks of her arrest, Aileen and her attorney had sold movie rights to her story. At the same time, three top investigators on her case retained their own lawyer to field offers from Hollywood, cringing with embarrassment when their unseemly haste to profit on the case was publicly revealed. In self-defense, the officers maintained that they were moved to sell their version of the case by pure intentions, planning to put the money in a victims fund. To a man, they denounced exposure of their scheme as the malicious work of brother officers, driven by their jealousy at being cut out of the deal. A bizarre sideshow to the pending murder trial began in late January 1991, with the appearance of Arlene Pralle as Aileens chief advocate. A 44-year-old ranchers wife and born-again Christian, Pralle advised Wuornos in her first letter to prison that Jesus told me to write you. Soon, they were having daily telephone conversations at Pralles expense, Arlene arranging interviews for Wuornos and herself, becoming a fixture on tabloid talk shows from coast to coast. In Pralles words, their relation-ship was a soul binding. Were like Jonathan and David in the Bible. Its as though part of me is trapped in jail with her. We always know what the other is feeling and thinking. I just wish I was Houdini. I would get her out of there. If there was a way, I would do it, and we could go and be vagabonds forever. Instead, Pralle did the next best thing, legally adopting Wuornos as her daughter.

Aileens trial for the murder of Richard Mallory opened on January 13, 1992. Eleven days later, Wuornos took the stand as the only defense witness, repeating her tale of violent rape and beating at Mallorys hands, insisting that she shot him dead in self-defense, using her pistol only after he threatened her life. With no hard evidence to support her claim, jurors rejected the story, deliberating a mere ninety minutes before they convicted Aileen of first-degree murder on January 27. Im innocent, she shouted when the verdict was announced. I was raped! I hope you get raped! Scumbags of America! The jury recommended death on January 29, and the following day Aileen was formally sentenced to die. In April, she pled guilty to the murders of victims Burress, Humphreys, and Spears, with a second death sentence delivered on May 7, 1992. Around the same time, Aileen offered to show police where the corpse of Peter Siems was hidden, near Beaufort, South Carolina. Authorities flew her to the Piedmont State, but nothing was found at the designated site, Daytona police insisting that Wuornos created the ruse to get a free vacation from jail. They speculate that Siems was dumped in a swamp near I-95, north of Jacksonville, but his body has never been found.

The Wuornos case took an ironic twist on November 10, 1992, with reporter Michele Gillens revelations on Dateline NBC. Thus far, Aileens defenders and Florida prosecutors alike had failed to unearth any criminal record for Richard Mallory that would substantiate Aileens claim of rape and assault. In the official view, Mallory was clean, if somewhat paranoid and pussy-crazy. Gillen, though had no apparent difficulty finding out that Mallory had served ten years for a violent rape in another state, facts easily obtained by checking his name through the FBIs computer network. The fascinating part about this, Gillen said, is here is a woman who for the past year has been screaming that she didnt get a fair trial and that everyone was rushing to make a TV movie about her--and in reality that comes true. (The first TV movie depicting Aileen aired on a rival network one week to the day after Gillens report.) Even so, Gillen stopped short of calling for Aileens release. Shes a sick woman who blew those men away, Gillen declared, but thats no reason for the state to say, Shes confessed to killing men, we dont have to do our homework.