Paul John Knowles, a.k.a. "Lester Daryl Gates" aka "Daryl Golden" was an American spree killer, also known as The Casanova Killer, tied to the deaths of 18 people in 1974, though he claimed to have taken 35 lives. Born in Orlando, Florida, his father gave him up to live in foster homes and reformatories after he was convicted of a petty crime. Knowles himself was first incarcerated at the age of 19, and in the years following he spent more time in prison. In 1974, he was granted parole and sought to marry Mrs. Angela Covic, with whom he had corresponded from prison. Allegedly because of something a psychic told her, she ended the relationship. After this rejection, Knowles went on a murderous spree across northern Florida. He was eventually caught in Georgia and sent back to Florida. In early 1974, Knowles was serving time in the prison at Raiford, Florida when he began corresponding with a California divorcee, named Angela Covic. Angela visited the prison long enough to accept his proposal of marriage. She was then instrumental in getting Knowles released from prison by paying for the lawyers used to win his release. When he was granted parole and released following the stint at Raiford Prison, Knowles flew directly to San Francisco to marry Angela Covic.
Highly agitated at the rejection by Covic, Knowles traveled back home to Jacksonville, Florida. He was soon arrested after a bar scuffle and was jailed again. He avoided a quick trip back to prison on this occasion by picking a lock and escaping on July 26, 1974. After escaping, Knowles went on a murderous spree across the country starting that same night in Jacksonville. He was eventually caught in Georgia, but while he was claiming to assist officers in finding the officer's pistol he had used in his last two murders, he tried to escape and was shot and killed by a police officer. Paul John Knowles was a man with an I.Q. of 129, an excellent musician and a disco dancer. He was so good a dancer that when he would get on the dance floor, others would get off the dance floor just to watch him.
Paul John Knowles was a lean, red-haired joy killer who taped his own confession to fourteen murders and told a Georgia sheriff that he had killed eighteen times in seven states. "I ask him to tell me how many people he had killed," said Georgia Sheriff Earl Lee, who had custody of Knowles for two weeks in December of 1974. "He made a figure 18 in the palm of his hand. I said where did you kill them?" Knowles wrote out several states on a peace of scrap paper, showed it to Sheriff Earl Lee and then burned the piece of paper. Sheriff Earl Lee describes Knowles as "intelligent and mean as hell." Knowles was charged with seven killings in Georgia, Florida and Ohio. Georgia Law Enforcement officers were fearful of an escape attempt and moved him from county to county. In early December 1974, Knowles was transferred to the Douglas County, Georgia Jail, which was under Sheriff Earl Lee. On December 18, 1974, Sheriff Earl Lee and G.B.I. Agent, Ronnie Angel were taking Knowles to Henry County, where Knowles had dumped a weapon he had taken from the Florida State Trooper he had Killed.
While traveling on I-20 close to Lee Road, Knowles picked his handcuffs with a paper clip. Knowles then leaned over the seat and grabbed Sheriff Earl Lee's gun, discharging it through the holster. Sheriff Earl Lee, who was driving tried to control the car and struggle with Knowles at the same time. During the struggle Agent Ronnie Angel, without hesitation whipped out his own pistol and shot Knowles point blank in the rear of the Sheriff's car; killing him instantly.
Paulin was born in Fort-de-France, Martinique. His father flew to France just after his birth, leaving his teen-aged mother to fend for herself and the baby. Paulin was raised in Martinique by his paternal grandmother, who owned a restaurant and allegedly paid little attention to her grandson. When he was ten, Paulin started to live with his now married mother, trying to blend in with his stepbrothers and sisters. His behavior started to become erratic and violent towards the other children, and eventually his mother asked his father to take their son to France. His father accepted in order to avoid paying alimony.
Alternately dubbed the “Monster of Montmartre” and the “Little Old Lady Killer,” Thierry Paulin stood out as an anomaly not only within “normal” society but among serial killers. The victims of most sadistic psychopaths generally mirror the murderer’s own sexual orientation and race: whites tend to prey on whites, blacks on blacks, straight males on women, gay males on other men, etc. Paulin violated all these expectations. A bleached blond black drag queen, he savagely murdered nearly two dozen old white women in the Montmartre neighbourhood of Paris in the mid-1980’s, creating a panic among the city’s elderly female population.
Paulin’s crime wave began in 1984, when he was twenty-one. Accompanied on occasion by his nineteen-year-old lover, Jean-Thierry Mathurin, Paulin would trail old ladies home as they returned from the market, then pounce when they unlocked the front door. He and his accomplice killed with unusual ferocity. One victim, eighty-year-old Marie Choy, was bound with steel wire and forced to drink bleach before she was beaten to death. Another, seventy-five-year-old Maria Mico-Diaz, was so savagely hacked with a knife that she was nearly cut in two.
The “Monster of Montmartre” celebrate his twenty-fourth birthday in November 1987, by attacking three victims during a single weekend. One survived to describe him to the police, who had little trouble tracking down a black transvestite with platinum blond hair. In custody, Paulin confessed to the murder of twenty-one female victims between the ages of sixty and ninety-five. He died of AIDS in April 1989, while awaiting trial.
Randall Woodfield is anAmerican serial killer who was dubbed The I-5 Killer or The I-5 Bandit by law enforcement due to the crimes he committed along the Interstate 5 corridorrunning through Washington, Oregon, and California. Before his capture, the I-5 Killer was suspected of multiple sexual assaults and murders. A native ofOregon, Woodfield was convicted of three murders and is suspected of killing up to 44 people. He is currently incarcerated at the Oregon State Penitentiary. In 2011, Woodfield was the subject of a Lifetime television movie Hunt for the I-5 Killer. The movie was based on the book The I-5 Killer by crime author Ann Rule. The former Greenbay Packers' hopeful, is nearing 60, and his black hair is gray now. He married twice while he was in prison, the last marriage a few years ago. He has little chance of a parole, although he still claims to be innocent of the rapes and murders of numerous victims in the seventies and early eighties. Detectives feel he is actually guilty of many more homicides than he was charged with, but, of course, there is no statute of limitation on murder. On February 8, 2006, Portland detectives announced that modern-day DNA testing had linked Randy's body fluids with the 1980 murder of Cherie Ayers, who had graduated from high school with him, and with whom he planned their "10 Year Class Reunion." Anyone who has read The I-5 Killer knows that the murders of Darci Fix, Doug Altic, Julie Reitz, In the Portland area, and Donna Eckard and Janell Jarvis, In Shasta County, California, have either gone unsolved or unpunished. There is little doubt that modern forensic science will finally close out those cases. No one should get a half dozen murders for the price of one.
Christopher Mhlengwa Zikode is a South African rapist and serial killer who was convicted in 1995 on 8 counts of murder, 5 counts of rape, 5 counts of attempted murder and 2 counts of indecent assault. Zikode is however considered responsible for at least 18 murders and 11 attempted murders. Known as the "Donnybrook Serial Killer," Zikode murdered 18 people and attempted to murder another 11 over a period of two years in the rural Natal midlands town of Donnybrook in South Africa. All his victims were between 20 and 30. His modus operandi was to kick open the door of his victims' house, shoot the men in the head and drag the women to nearby plantations, where he would rape them repeatedly - sometimes for as long as five hours - and kill them. If they resisted he would shoot them first and commit necrophilia. Sometimes he would attack women from behind in footpaths in the area. Mhlengwa, 21 was arrested on September 29, 1995. On January 7, 1997, a High Court judge sentenced 23-year-old Zikode (23) to 140 years in prison, including five life sentences for a six-month rape and murder rampage. The judge said during sentencing that Zikode had absolutely no regard for human life and his attitude to women was "contemptible," and found it unnecessary to review the "gory details" of the case. Zikode was convicted on 21 charges, including eight murders, five rapes, five attempted murders and one indecent assault, between April and September 1995. The judge noted "with dismay" that ZIKODE was arrested for the first time in July 1995 for the attempted murder of Beauty ZULU. While on bail he committed five more offences - two attempted murders, housebreaking with intent to rape and murder.
Huang Yong was a Chinese serial killer accused of murdering 17 teenage boys, although he is suspected of 25 murders, between September 2001 and 2003.In 2003, Huang Yong confessed to murdering 25 young men and boys. His motive: He wanted to know what it felt like to be an assassin. He specifically targeted young males, because older men were too vigilant and killing females would make him less of a “hero.” He began killing in September 2001 by luring boys from video halls and Internet cafes to his house under the guise of getting them jobs or funding their education. He would tie them to a noodle processing machine he called the “intelligent hobbyhorse” before suffocating them to death with a cloth. He then kept their belts as souvenirs. He was arrested in November 2003 after a would-be victim, a 16 year-old boy named Zhang Liang went to the police. The investigators at first were not convinced of Liang’s story but the boy claimed that Huang had invited him to his apartment by offering him a job. Once he got there, Huang tried to strangle him and that he went into unconsciousness three times. After, when the young boy awoke, Huang said to him “I killed at least 25 people. You’re number 26″ but Liang escaped and reported him to the police. The police found the bodies of more than 12 boys in his apartment. Huang Yong was convicted for 17 of the 25 murders. He was sentenced to death during a three-hour-long trial in December 2003. Over 300 people attended the trial, and the court installed loudspeakers so that people outside could hear the proceedings.
Pedro Pablo Nakada Ludeña was born on February 28, 1973 in Lima, Peru. He was reportedly abused by his family from a young age. His sister's would have him dress up as woman and his father was an alcoholic who would abuse his mother. He was also raped by his brothers after they thought that he had killed a dog. Ludeña claimed to have tortured animals as a child. Ludeña killed his victims with 9mm pistols that were equipped with rubber silencers that he had made from slippers. He claimed of wishing to cleanse the Earth by eliminating drug addicts, prostitutes, homosexuals, and criminals after being commanded by God to do so.
Authorities from the homicide divisions of the Peruvian National Police in Lima and Huaral arrested Pedro Pablo Nakada Ludeña 33, prime suspect of the murders of more than 13 people in the northern provincial city of Huaral. Dubbed the "Apostle of death," Ludeña was arrested along with Christian Garcia Ponzino 26, after resisting arrest during a shootout with police authorities. While in custody, Ludeña confessed to the murders and told police he killed people who deserved to die. He added that he was ridding society of what he considered to be bad seeds. Garcia, who maintains his innocence, and Ludeña worked together at a mechanic's shop in Huaral. He was convicted of 17 murders and confessed to killing 25. He was sentenced to the maximum of 35 years in prison.
On May 15, 1998, Donato Bilancia, confessed to a string of slayings in the Italian Riviera, saying he was mentally ill, suddenly flipped and could not explain his 90-day long serial killing spree. He spent seven hours through the night smoking and confessing to the magistrate in charge of his case to the tune of 18 murders, 15 of them since October. "He expressly asked for treatment because he is not able to realise what he has done. He cannot explain to himself what happened: something suddenly went off in him," the lawyer said. The confessed killer, who was arrested May 6, added that he had acted alone and on his own initiative. Prosecutors in Genoa said they now have evidence linking a Donato Bilancia to the killing of two women on trains around the Italina Riviera. Sources close to investigation confirmed that prosecutors had found gunpowder on the clothes of the two women shot dead in the toilets of trains to the crime scenes of the six murdered prostitutes.
Police said Bilancia was also under investigation for the murder of a money-changer near Ventimiglia on the French border in March and of a gas station attendant killed on the highway between Ventimiglia and the Mediterranean port city of Genoa in April. They have also reopened the case of a October 1997 shooting of a newlywed couple in their apartment in Genoa. A second official arrest warrant was issued for Bilancia in connection with the murder of two security guards shot dead last year when they went to the aid of a transvestite being attacked. The transvestite, called Julio Castro and known as "Lorena," pointed out Bilancia as the alleged assailant in an police lineup. Police revealed that one of the train murders took place on the same Genoa-Ventimiglia line where Bilancia's brother, Michele, threw himself and his small son into the path of an oncoming train 11 years ago. Bilancia, whose Genoa apartment was found to contain porn videos, syringes, and a statue of a phallus, said he bought a .38 Smith & Wesson revolver last year with 50 bullets and, "after firing a few practice rounds", set about killing a string of people after he was betrayed by people he knew in the local gambling world. In a lurid 14-page confession, the feared Riviera Serial Killer calmly recounted in detail how he had killed a gas station attendant, two goldsmiths, two bureau de change operators, two women in train lavatories, three security guards, four prostitutes, an underworld gambling figure and his wife, and a fellow gambler.
He started his murderous rampage with the killings of the underworld gambling figure Maurizio Parenti and his wife Carla. Next came the fellow gambler, Giorgio Cenentaro, who he strangled with adhesive tape. Donato said he murdered a prostitute "for each nationality" that worked his city's streets. His penultimate murder victim was Elisabotta Zoppetti, a 32-year-old nurse from Milan, who was returning home on a high-speed train from a weekend on the Riviera. "I got on the train at Genoa. In first class there was a woman," said Bilancia. "I didn't know her. I waited until she went to the lavatory, taking her bag with her. I opened the door with a false key. She screamed. I put her jacket over her head and fired. I had got on with the intention to kill. The victim had to be a woman, even if I never touched her." His last victim, Maria Angela Rubina, 32, also died in the bathroom of a train. "I did it like the other one," he told police. "Very quickly." On April 12, 2000, Donato Bilancia, 49, was sentenced by a Genoa court to 13 life sentences. Bilancia, a compulsive gambler, confessed to slaying 17 people in a six-month killing spree on the Italian Riviera.
Irina Gaidamachuk, a 41-year-old mother of two in the remote Urals region town of Krasnovfimsk, had a big thirst for vodka. But her husband Yury wouldn't give her money to buy the drink. So, Irina decided to earn it herself. From 2003 until June 2010, Gaidamachuk, by posing as a social worker, gained entry into the flats of women living on government pensions. Using this ruse, she used a hammer to smash the skulls of 17 women between the ages 61 and 89. Each murder brought a small amount of cash from the victims's purses.
Following Gaidamachuk's arrest in June 2010, the accused serial killer confessed that she had murdered these women for vodka money. At her trial in western Russia's Yekaterinburg, the country's fourth largest city, three psychiatrists testified that the defendant was sane when she hammered her victims to death. Gaidamachuk was charged with 17 counts of murder and 1 attempted murder. Forensic psychiatric examination conducted in GNTSSSP Serbsky showed that Gaidamachuk, although she showed some variation in the mind, was legally sane at the time of the murders. In February 2012, the court case began. Gaidamachuk gave a confession to the indictment during the preliminary investigation; but, contested this throughout her trial. On June 12, 2012, Gaidamachuk was sentenced to 20 years in prison.
During the 1970s and 1980s, the victims of Kraft were among the many dead bodies found near highways in California. While the investigators believed the murders to be the work of a single serial killer, who was dubbed "The Highway Killer", there were two other perpetrators, William Bonin and Patrick Kearney, besides Kraft, who was the last of the three to be caught. In all cases, the victims were males who suffered some kind of sexual abuse and torture before being killed. Kraft's killings are believed to have started in 1971, the victim being Wayne Joseph Dukette, though Kraft was never convicted of his murder. He was first arrested on suspicion of murder when the severed head of one of his victims, Keith Crotwell, was found near the Long Beach Marina. Since he had been seen getting into a car revealed to be Kraft's, he was questioned as a suspect, but he claimed he let him ride along with him and then let him off at an all-night café. Kraft was released due to a lack of evidence. He was caught for the last time, just after 1:00 a.m. on May 14, 1983, when the California Highway Patrol pulled him over for driving under the influence. When the officers looked into his car, they saw a man who appeared to be sleeping in the back seat. When they opened it, they found him to be dead, with obvious signs of foul play. The man was Terry Gambrel, a 25-year-old U.S. Marine officer and Kraft's final victim, and had been strangled with his own belt.
When a search warrant for the car was obtained and carried out, the police found tranquilizers and prescription drugs inside as well as an envelope containing 47 photographs of young men, most of them either dead or seemingly asleep, in pornographic poses. There was also a lot of blood on the passenger seat, even though Gambrel didn't have any lacerations on his body.
Kraft's "score-card". When his home was searched as well, more evidence was found, including possessions of murder victims and Kraft's "score-card", on which he listed his victims by strange nicknames related to their locations or personal habits, such as "Deoderant", "New Year's Eve", and "Iowa". Kraft claimed the terms on the list referred to sexual encounters he'd had and other mundane things. In the end, Kraft was charged with 16 murders, among them a John Doe who was nicknamed as "Airplane Hill" on the "score-card" who wasn't identified until 1995, his real name being Kevin Clark Bailey. He was found guilty on all counts as well as some other related charges of sodomy and torture. At first, he was sentenced to death (for which he became briefly acquainted with William Bonin, another "Freeway Killer" on death row), but the sentence was upheld in 2000. He once pursued a lawsuit against a true crime writer who had written a book about his case, titled Angel of Darkness, as well as his publisher for $62 million in damages, claiming that the way he was portrayed in the book had smeared his "good name" and hurt his "prospects for future employment". Needless to say, the lawsuit was dismissed as frivolous. Kraft continues to serve his sentence at the San Quentin death row to this day.
