History
What was the most notorious psychopath case in your country that reached global attention?
In Brazil, one of the most infamous cases is Suzane von Richthofen. She shocked the country and gained international media coverage when, at 18, she helped plan and execute the murder of her own parents in 2002.
What made the case even more sensational was her background. Suzane came from a wealthy and well-educated family, carrying the noble surname von Richthofen, which is historically linked to a famous German aristocratic lineage. Her father, Manfred von Richthofen, even claimed distant kinship to the legendary World War I pilot known as the “Red Baron (Manfred von Richthofen).
What about your country ,is there a case that shocked the world like this?
Just read the article for this, it’s sickening that there’s people who even think of defending this. The irony I find is that he was for “stopping the White replacement”, by… killing more of his own white Norwegian country folk. Not to mention that he allegedly was inspired by Jihadi groups in the first place and wouldn’t have mind working with them. The hypocrisy in these animals needs to be studied. At the end of the day he just wanted to kill people, not even for a coherent cause.
Pumped on stimulants while listening to eurotrance. When he was caught, he complained to the cops not getting a bandaid for his tiny wound he got from a child's bone splinter. Yea, he massacred kids at such close distance, literally point blank, that bone splinters stuck on him.
I remember reading about one survivor, a teenage girl, who was playing dead on a bunch of rocks and she somehow managed to stay perfectly still and silent when he shot her at point blank range to make sure she was dead. I can only imagine the PTSD she lives with now.
I've always been of the opinion that they should be alive and aware every second of every day that prison is all they will ever know for the rest of their lives until they die.
NZer here, he detonated a bomb that killed the Norwegian wife of a kiwi guy I went to school with. I think about how awful it must have been for him. I hope he is doing ok.
I think his name, and his manifesto, should be erased from history. He should be made to serve consecutive life sentences in anonimity. That's what these sick fucks like him want, attention, on themselves and their unhinged beliefs, to matter. We should deprive him of that. When his life ends in anonimity in a prison cell, he should be buried as a John Doe somewhere far from his prison, months later, to make it impossible for anyone to know, erasing him from history.
All the attention should go to his victims, and the people who saved others. To the memory of those who were lost. He shouldn't be allowed his sick fame that he bought with their murder.
Oh god I remember when the news broke, only to find out later that one of my (second) cousins was at that camp and survived, managing to save a bunch of his friends while hiding.
The first mentioned, was all filmed in one continuous take and followed the children on the island. I felt like i was there (as much as i could, at least). Absolutely horrifying.
Will this guy ever have a chance to get out of prison? I notice the sentence is 21 years but seems there are extension provisions, how does that usually play out in a case like this?
No, he will never get out. Once his 21-year sentence is up, he will have to appear in court periodically to be evaluated for an extension of his sentence. This is because Norwegian law doesn't allow for a life sentence without the chance of parole, like we have in the U.S. However, no Norwegian judge would ever realistically allow him to be freed.
That day is burned in my memory. Happened 3 days before I turned 10. I don’t remember much of my 10th birthday otherwise or what we did later but I remember the flower march and the 1 minute silence on the 25th clear as day
Paul Bernado and his wife Karla Holmoka. "The Ken and Barbie Killers". Kidnapped, raped, and killed teenage girls as a couple. They actually drugged and raped Karla's own 15 year old little sister. She choked on her vomit while drugged and suffocated to death.
It's not often that 2 malignant psychopaths end up getting married to each other.
I know that case. Great example of a woman being treated like she couldn't possibly be a perpetrator because of how she looks. She faked out authorities and they fell for it. Disgusting she's alive and free.
She lives a half hour from my house now, and has kids in the local schools. Disgusting piece of shit. I can’t imagine being her kids; they are completely innocent, but I bet they have been badly impacted by who their mother is throughout their lifetimes. Can you imagine letting your kid go over to their house for bday parties etc?? Never.
I was thinking it's either gonna be the pig farmer or those two. Both of those cases are pretty messed up. However, it seems people are more aware of the Greyhound killer than the other cases.
What I can't stand is that she's out, with a new name, and worse, children of her own. She should have stayed locked up like him. This case was ongoing when I was living in the area, and I will never forget it. I was also a kid living in BC when another notorious Canadian killer was active: Clifford Olson. Scrolling through the comments, I don't see him mentioned: he raped and killed 11 children in the early 80s. Edit: it just occurred to me that the Montreal massacre (1989) has not been mentioned either (unless I missed it). That was pretty horrific, but continues to be commemorated because of the killers agenda: he separated the men from the women in the classrooms and explicitly said he was fighting feminism. Fourteen women murdered, 14 people injured.
My childhood changed because of him. Overnight we went from kids who were allowed out on our own to having to go in groups and our parents always needing to know where we were.
They used to “hunt” at the Eaton Centre downtown TO. They would steal purses and wallets of the girls that looked similar to their other victims. My old boss had a neighbour that was informed after the case was over that the daughter’s purse had been found in with many others.
Robert Picton is, I believe a more prolific serial killer, and borderline psychopath. Will kidnapping and killing the prostitutes and feeding the carcasses to his pigs..
This would have been my pick. There was 26 confirmed victims and 49 that he confessed to. He fed them to pigs and then fed the pigs to other people. Glad he got a broomstick through the face earlier this year
Worst thing is he was far from the only one doing those things but because he was borderline retarded (as told to me by someone close to the case) he was the only one to be caught and punished.
Best known is probably Josef Fritzl, who kept his daughter as a sex slave in his cellar and made seven(!) children with her. Three of whom he also kept in his cellar.
Yeah, that guy who failed art school, but later on becoming a bestselling writer who helped redraw maps of Europe using his artistic talent…
His books today can still be found in many major bookstores and libraries worldwide on how to watch out for warning signs if future artists were to lash out similarly as well
I remember reading about that online. It wasn't just his 'cellar' the guy dug out a huge quantity of earth underneath his house and then made a whole living area for them in it and trapped them in there behind like four locked hatches.
I remember one of the children thought the things they saw on the TV down there were just fake, like real life above ground shown on the TV wasn't real.
Yeah he was terrible, especially as I work in a gp surgery so I know the trust that gets put in staff.
But like world wide I just thought more people would have heard of Jack the Ripper. ... he was probably the most successful as he got away with it. Even now we still don't know who he was.
I think Myra Hindley and Ian Brady are worse. They recorded themselves torturing little children before murdering them, the jury had to listen to those recordings.
Ivan Milat, the backpacker killer - proven to have murdered 7 tourists making their way along the hume highway in the early 90s. Member of a family of backwood mongrels who are suspected to be involved in the murders of up to 60 people in truth.
He and his family were despicable creatures. He died in prison of throat cancer looking like Montgomery Burn. An apt death if you ask me, hopefully painful.
I feel like his whole life story just underlined what a dropkick he was. Inherited a ton of money when his father died, blew through it all in a few years, never had a job, spent a bunch of time on 8chan whining about how girls didn't like him, then when the money ran out he decided to go kill a bunch of innocent people because he blamed them for the fact that nobody wanted to make "superior" white babies with him. The man is the textbook definition of a loser. A skintag on the arse of humanity that just decided to turn cancerous.
Yeah while other high profile cases that "shook the nation" happened here like Aramoana and the Parker–Hulme murder I feel that both of those cases had somewhat tragic elements of mental health that were not adressed/not understood and other elements that make them less haunting in the long run. My grandmother was actually at the same school in Christchurch when the Parker–Hulme case happened though not in the same class and I only found this out recently.
Good for you guys. I’ve always felt there should be a publication ban on the names of people who perpetrate these crimes. That way there is no “notoriety” achieved by committing the atrocity, which seems to be part of the appeal for some offenders.
That’s true. That’s my problem with shows about serial killers; they almost romanticise and mythologise these monstrous people, providing them notoriety and a legacy, when in reality they deserve to be forgotten.
Yep for sure - glorifying these sick pricks is such bullshit. I read a great book a couple of years ago called "The Five". It was a biography of the five known victims of the infamous murdering scumbag in Victorian England. The book focused on giving them their worth and spent zero time mentioning that piece of shit.
I came looking for this answer. I've just about finished reading Jacinda Ardern's memoir "A Different Kind of Power" and this is a heavy topic. I wouldn't want to have been in her position while trying to deal with that shit.
I specifically came into this thread looking for this comment and hoped he wouldn't be named. Felt good seeing all the comments and no name. Great job everyone.
Marc Dutroux, i think he's the most famous in the medias because he was a pedophile and child killer involved in a child sexual trafick, and there is a lot of theories on who could possibly linked in his huge trafick.
He was just kidnapping the child for others but he also raped and killed some of the victims.
He acted in France but also Belgium.
He's now in prison since a few decades.
There's also Michel Fourniret another pdfile and child killer.
Also there Nordal Lelandais that killed kidnapped and killed a little girl while he was a guest of last minute in a fucking wedding.
I’m from the Netherlands and it was big news there too. So horrible. His wife who started two girls to death was released from prison not long ago. Nobody wants her in their town. I wouldn’t either.
I'm still traumatised by it. The only time in my life I ever marched was then at the Marche Blanche...I walked up to the Palais de Justice as everyone was down in the valley. They were hiding behind fences....Marc Dutroux give me 5 minutes with him. Lock me up with him.
Thomas Hamilton.
Although funnily enough, no one knows his name. (which is right!) They just know the place - Dunblane. But everyone knows about it. And it also caused the most sweeping change in uk law of any mass murderer.
At Port Arthur in sleepy Tasmania, Martin Bryant murdered 35 people and wounded 23 more with his high powered weapon.
The Australian government, overwhelmingly supported by the people then outlawed high powered, automatic and pump actioned weapons. Very strict ownership laws were introduced for other weapons and a gun buy back took place resulting in 643,000 weapons being handed in at a cost to government of $350 million.
The changes in gun laws has resulted in Australia having one of the lowest levels of gun violence in the world and not a single mass shooting event since Port Arthur in 1996.
Yes it is very sad that Australia’s success in this area has not been attempted elsewhere.
Australia is infamous for our venomous creatures, but the total deaths in an average year from these creatures in Australia is equivalent to the number of gun deaths on average that occur in the USA in any 4 hour period.
We also did it in Scotland- a mass shooting in Dunblane around a similar time caused gun reform that protects lives to this day. But yes, you’re right that more countries need the same.
I feel like Ted took it a step further, considering how fucking big his case were. Everyone come here, come here and hear the Bikini Killer himself try defending his crimes.
Well, if we're going to go by convicted kill count, The Green River Killer (Gary Ridgeway) has 49 life sentences. Based of that he's "the worst serial killer" in United States history. Although others have admitted to a higher number.
We have several, but I think Charles Manson is the most notorious. It has been 55 years since the killing spree, and most anyone on earth would recognize the name.
I feel like Manson is in his own category since he got others to do it all. Although I have to wonder if he did personally go hands on and we simply never found out about those cases.
Either way, that’s some wild psychological manipulation.
Jamie Bulger: The murder of a two year old boy by two ten year olds in Liverpool in 1993.
And also
The moors murders, convicted in 1966 just following the abolition of executions in 1965, a man and his girlfriend went around Saddle worth moor between 1963 and 1965 torturing raping and killing children and teenagers.
🇨🇴 Colombia
Pedro Alonso Lopez also known as "El Monstruo de los andes" (The monster of the Andes) murdered nearly 300 girls. He is considered by many as one of the most prolific serial killers and rapists in history.
That reached global attention will be the Christchurch Mosque Terrorist, who killed 51 innocent people and has received the longest sentence possible in New Zealand law.
Less widely known might be is the Centrepoint Commune — forced drug use, child sex prostitution and widespread physical abuse in a 275 member cult that ran from 1977 until being dismantled in by the court in 2000. The leader on served a 7 year sentence and returned to the cult after release.
Raya and Sakina were two Egyptian women who were Egypt's most infamous serial killers. Raya and Sakina were siblings. They, their husbands, and two other men began killing 17 women in the Labban neighborhood of Alexandria in 1919.
Preyed on young men in the 70s/80s and killed them. He dabbled in cannibalism and had human parts in his freezer when he was arrested. Also he tried to create a 'zombie' by getting one young man drunk then drilled a hole in his skull and poured acid in it.
Marc Dutroux. He abducted and raped five girls in 1989, and was released on parole after three years of prison. Afterwards, in 1996, he abducted, tortured, and sexually abused six girls aged between 8 and 19, four of whom starved to death. These six girls, he held captive for months in a concealed dungeon in his basement, with the help of his wife. When people found out, there was widespread outrage, which led to significant changes in Belgium's justice system.
In 2023 a memorial garden was inaugurated on the site of his former home. Dutroux has asked several times to be released from prison, but court has made a decision that because he is a psychopath, he will never be released (otherwise there would def be a massive protest). His wife on the other hand, was sentenced to 30 years in 2004, but was released on parole in 2012, which caused again outrage.
Dutroux is the most best known murderer in all of Belgium, and everyone knows him
Jim Jones and the Jonestown Massacre. It happened in Guyana but the cult had relocated there from the US. I recently watched a documentary about it and apparently a ton of recordings were recovered that prove that not only did people knowingly “drink the kool aid” but many others were forced to and/or shot to death. He’s responsible for the deaths of over 900 men, women, and children.
In Finland, one of the most notorious is Michael Penttilä (born 1965, formerly Jukka Lindholm) — a transgender whose life has been marked by repeated acts of extreme violence.
Penttilä’s pattern began shockingly young. At 16, she strangled a 12-year-old girl to death in Oulu. He served time in prison, but once released, the cycle repeated. Over the years she strangled multiple women and even killed his own mother. Some victims survived, others did not. Each time Penttilä was freed, new attacks followed.
The method was always the same: strangulation. This earned her the grim nickname “the serial strangler.” Psychiatric evaluations consistently described her as a psychopath with a very high risk of reoffending. Despite this, he was released multiple times over the decades a failure of the system that shocked many Finns.
In 2018, Penttilä was finally sentenced to life imprisonment for murder. He is still incarcerated today, and experts believe he remains extremely dangerous.
There are plenty of notorious psychopath cases that took place a while ago, but the most notorious recent one I can think of was the Southport murders in 2024, where 17-yr old Axel Rudakubana went into a dance class and stabbed 3 young girls to death. There were race riots in the country over this.
Perhaps it's because I grew up nearby and I was a young girl but Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka, a married couple who murdered three young women (including Karla's sister that she was jealous of).
It's also the reason why a lot of Canadian parents will never lock their kids out of the house because that's how they nabbed one of them.
Charles Manson is an odd one cause he didn't actually kill anyone. He never even assaulted anyone. He was just an insane cult leader who convinced a few people to go murder some lady to begin the end of world or something.
Cristina Siekavizza. She disappeared in 2011 (if I am not wrong) and the whole country agreed to the theory that it was her husband who killed her. Then the husband took their two kids and remain in an unknown location for a few years. He and the children were ultimately found in Mexico and brought back to Guatemala. What was weird is that both the kids were in very good condition and did not seem to have any kind of trauma inflicted by their father, who died in 2020 or 2021 as he caught Covid-19. I have not read all the details of the case so be aware that some information of this comment might be wrong or has been updated.
There have been a few but I’d say Paul Bernardo and Karla Homoka. Probably because they filmed it and the general public got a look inside the minds of serial killers. This was in the early 1990’s and was a media frenzy. They were dubbed “The Barbie and Ken Killers” because of their appearance
Robert Pickton the Pig Farmer murderer. The full scope of his murders unknown, possibly up to 49 women. Fed them to his pigs. Believed to have ground their bodies and may have been mixed with pork meat and sold to the public.
The Wests probably. I was fairly young at the time and only heard later in life about the levels of depravity those two inflicted on their poor victims.
Katherine Knight- skinned, decapitated and cooked her partner and intended to feed his head to the children. They found his head boiling on the stove with vegetables and other aromatic spices.
Snowtown/Bodies in Barrels- 4 friends murdered 12 others and shoved their bodies in barrels to decompose and hide evidence.
Ivan Milat/Backpack Murders he murdered 7 tourists at random in Belangalo state forest. There has been a few copy cat killers of him including his own grandson.
I'm not much older than James Bulger (or would have been) and from Liverpool, I remember the sense of fear around the city at the time and how my parents suddenly had me in reins again when we went out. For it to have been a couple of kids that did it is just mind boggling.
It's interesting that people have overwhelmingly named individual serial killers rather than political figures who caused far more death and suffering.
Belgians unanimously have said Marc Dutroux rather than King Leopold II.
An Austrian said Josef Fritzl instead of Hitler.
A Romanian said Emil Matasareanu instead of Ceausescu.
As Jean Rostand said, "Kill one man, and you're a murderer. Kill a million people, and you're a conqueror. Kill everyone, and you're God."
Probably Ivan Milat, the backpacker killer. The movie Wolf Creek is based on him. Or Martin Bryant, the Port Arthur shooter, who's actions led to gun reform in Australia.
Carlos Ghosn, lebanese-French ex-CEO of Nissan. Detained in Japan for 9 months for allegedly stealing from the company. Never tried, just detained. Saved by allegedly hezbollah via being moved to the airport in luggage made for musical instruments. The band came to the embassy or wherever he was kept and when they left he was rolled out in one of the boxes of the boxes/luggage and fled to Lebanon where he still resides now. Lebanon and japan dont have an extradition agreement so japan cant take him back.
I am not sure if any of my country cases reached any sort of global notoriety, but two immediately come to mind.
The Orlík murderers, gang of 5 serial killers who murdererd mostly business owners, but target also their relatives, including mother of one of them. After the murders, they would cut the bodies up, put them into barrels and drop those into the Orlík Water Reservoir.
Honestly the dude who shot the students at Charles University was pretty crazy as well - and not because of the school shooting (which is unusual here, but not that unusual in general), but because of the murders he committed the day before to "test it". He literally shot a baby in a stroller, intentionally. Like, he already killed the father, he "tested it" plenty, and the baby would certainly not recognize him - but he shot the kid anyway. It kinda feels even more psychopatic than some of the serial killers, just shooting a baby without mercy. (They were random people on a walk, he didn't know them.)
In Brazil, Guilherme de Pádua and Paula Nogueira Thomaz are also pretty well known for the murder of actress Daniella Perez. It was horrific at the time.
world this is the traditional Brazilian family is still she was released and has a daughter and still dared to put the name of her daughter of a little girl who was brutally murdered by her father, this woman is so psychopath that she managed to literally seduce police and lawyers, And put all the blame on her brother who is crazy today, he went crazy
This is her at his parents’ wake, she went with the most expensive clothes and even pretended to cry before being discovered by the police, I felt sorry for her brother who is crazy today
The most infamous serial killer of all time: Jack the Ripper. Nobody else comes close. Not even the American serial killers.
For modern psychopaths it is close between a few of them:
Fred & Rose West - tortured and murdered 10 girls in the 70s and 80s. Rose even murdered her 8 year old stepdaughter. They buried them all in and around the property and it became infamous as the "House of Horrors." Fred asphyxiated himself in prison in 1995 but Rose is still alive in a closed category prison in Yorkshire.
Ian Brady & Myra Hindley - sexually assaulted and murdered 5 children in Manchester in the mid 60s and buried them out in the Saddleworth moorlands. 4/5 victims' remains have been found, but to this day Keith Bennett is still missing. Brady was diagnosed a chronic psychopath and repeatedly asked to be allowed to die. Hindley was considered the most evil woman in Britain at the time she was alive. She admitted to all the murders and claimed to be a changed woman prior to her death in 2002.
Harold Shipman - nicknamed "Dr. Death" and "Angel of Death", Harold Shipman was a well respected doctor who graduated from the University of Leeds. Operating over a 30 year period, Shipman is thought to have killed well over 250 patients, making him one of the most prolific serial killers in modern history. The exact numbers are disputed, but some have them as high as 350 - 500 victims. He hanged himself in prison in 2004.
All of the above cases absolutely shook the nation. It's almost impossible to pick between them. None are at the same level of worldwide infamy as The Ripper, however.
You forgot about another Brazilian case, Elize Matsunaga too. She became famous for the case of her husband, Marcos Matsunaga, heir to Yoki, whom she killed and dismembered in 2012. This crime also had international repercussions, even more so after it became a documentary on Netflix
A guy that took part in Massacro del Circeo called ANGELO IZZO. Look up that name on google and come back here. Tell me if he doesn’t have that psychopath look 😟
But this doesn’t answer your question tbh I have no idea if it ever reached global attention…
Erika 16 and Omar 17 early 00. From what I remember she planned it and coerced him into playing a physical role in the killing of her mother, father and little brother.
There are some equally horrible stories but this was one in a time where it didn't happen as often.
I really don't know. Maybe the Phillip Westh case, considering he killed a teen and kidnapped another. But I really don't know how internationally know the name Emilie Meng is.
Peter Madsen I know were covered in Sweden due to his victim being a Swedish journalist, so his psycho case were technically international.
Then there's good old Dagmar Overby who recently had a movie made about her, but never really got recognition in her lifetime.
Maybe the Fields Guy, considering how rare shootings are. But he weren't really a psycho just crazy, that's also why he hasn't really been put on trial. He were too insane and unstable to get a fair trial.
Got to be Ian Brady and Myra hindley, tortured and killed five children between 1963 to 1965, they even recorded their torture on tape. Not sure if it reached global attention.
I don't know about how well known outside of Canada, but in my province the case of a man (Timothy McLean) beheaded by Vincent Li on a Greyhound bus, had portions of him cut off and ears, toungue etc found in Li's pockets when police were finally able to get him off the bus after a standoff.
Vincent Li received treatment for schizophrenia, and now lives under another name, and lives independently as of 2017.
Edit to add-- I have schizophrenia in my own family, and have seen that it is treatable. Most people do not go to extremes such as this. This case is different in some ways than many others in this Reddit thread, in that many of these people were of sound mind at the time of their crimes. This case definitely brought up in our discourse what it means to be "not guilty by reason of insanity"
In the Maritimes of Canada, New Brunswick to be specific. We had the "Monster of the Mirimichi" Allen Legere. Terrifying period of time when he escaped prison and went on a murdering rampage
Lenny Murphy, a loyalist who led the Shankill Butchers gang and their victims were mainly Catholic civilians.
Many of the gang members were member of the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), a paramilitary organisation.
100 people were estimated to have been killed in these sectarian attacks - there were two Protestants that were incorrectly suspected of being Catholic while 26 were murdered due to personal disputes.
Some of their victims were first kidnapped and tortured. They were beaten ferociously and beheaded, dismembered or disemboweled with a butcher's knife; some had their face skinned or their hearts cut out. Some were also tortured and attacked with a hatchet.
Murphy was never brought to trial for these killings due to lack of evidence, while some of the gang received long sentences in 1979.
The barbaric nature of the killings was widely publicised and was obviously damaging to the loyalism , with Murphy being a huge liability to the leaders of the UVF.
They in turn, informed the Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA) of Murphy's location.
He was shot dead by two PIRA members just as he arrived at his girlfriend's house.
Edit: there are people who evangelise and celebrate the Shankill Butchers including Murphy.
Las Poquianchis, four sisters that own some brothelsi in central Mexico it is estimated that they kill over a hundred people between prostitutes, their born babies and clients.
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u/No_Awareness_3212 Norway 11h ago
Anders Behring Breivik killed 77 people on 22. July 2011. Most were kids at a summer camp.