13 Serial Killers Who Inspired Some Seriously Sick Movies and TV Shows

Part of what makes movies and TV shows inspired by the Zodiac Killer so terrifying — a list that includes 1971's The Zodiac Killer (pictured above), 2007's Zodiac, and 2005's The Zodiac, as well as an episode of American Horror Story — is that the perpetrator was never caught. He could still be out there and could strike at any moment. The killer is believed to have carried out at least five murders in the late '60s in San Francisco's Bay Area and gained notoriety for the cryptic messages he'd send local newspapers about his murders. One segment of a decoded note read, "I like killing people because it is so much fun." Every message concluded with a symbol of a circle with a cross through it, as well as a portion of a three-part cipher that he promised contained his identity.

In 1888, Jack the Ripper tore through London on a killing spree, murdering five prostitutes in sadistic, torturous ways that suggested a particular distaste for the female gender. His mutilations quickly became the stuff of legends and made police think he had an astute knowledge of the human anatomy. Since he was never caught, the murders remain some of England's most infamous unsolved mysteries. His acts have inspired countless onscreen iterations, most notably Johnny Depp's 2001 film From Hell (pictured above) and Alfred Hitchcock's riveting 1927 thriller, The Lodger.

American Horror Story is full of appearances from prolific serial killers, but its interpretation of the Axeman of New Orleans during its Coven season remains one of its most bone-chilling. The character in the show, played menacingly by Danny Huston (pictured above), is based on real-life murders — mostly on Italian grocers — that occurred in New Orleans between 1918 and 1919. He first murdered an Italian couple who owned a grocery by slitting their throats as they slept and then bashing their skulls in with his ax. A month later, he attacked a second couple (also grocers), but both survived their brutal wounds (the woman blamed the attack on her boyfriend, who was arrested and thrown in jail before being acquitted nine months later).

A few months after that, reports of more and more attacks rolled in: a young pregnant woman who awoke to a dark figure standing over her before he bashed her face in with his ax (she miraculously survived), an elderly Italian grocer who died from head trauma, and an immigrant grocer who was attacked along with his wife and 2-year-old daughter (the parents survived, but their daughter did not). The killer later sent a threatening letter to the Times-Picayune newspaper that made a bizarre proposition to the city's residents:

"I am very fond of jazz music, and I swear by all the devils in the nether regions that every person shall be spared in whose home a jazz band is in full swing at the time I have just mentioned. If everyone has a jazz band going, well, then, so much the better for you people. One thing is certain and that is that some of your people who do not jazz it on Tuesday night (if there be any) will get the axe."

Although no one died that night, attacks continued until Oct. 27, 1919, after the murder of grocer Mike Pepitone. Police were unable to determine who was responsible, and thankfully he was never heard from again.

If you've seen The Snowtown Murders floating around Netflix, just know that the real-life crimes were also known as the "bodies in barrels murders," so that should clue you in to how brutal the film version (pictured above) of one of Australia's longest and most publicized murder cases is. In the late '90s in a poor suburb of Adelaide, Australia, a charismatic, homophobic man named John Bunting murdered 11 people (with the help of some friends) so that he could steal their welfare payments.

Eight of the bodies were found stored in barrels in an abandoned bank vault, and the other two were in the backyard of his former home. When he was caught and the case went to trial, a witness claimed the killers were cannibals, eating portions of flesh from one of their victims. He is currently serving 11 consecutive sentences of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.

Chicago resident John Wayne Gacy (pictured above) was convicted of sexual assault in 1968, which led investigators to the shocking discovery that he was responsible for killing 33 other young men. Most of their bodies had been buried under Gacy's home, where he lured them with the promise of a construction job. He would then kidnap, sexually assault, and strangle his victims (except his first kill, whom he stabbed to death), all of which he'd occasionally do while dressed as his alter ego, "Pogo the Clown." He was given the death penalty in 1980 and was executed by lethal injection on May 10, 1994.

His actions resulted in films like Gacy, Dear Mr. Gacy, To Catch a Killer, and the 2001 documentary Serial Killers: The Real Life Hannibal Lecters, and he was rumored to have been the inspiration behind Pennywise the clown in Stephen King's It. He also appears in American Horror Story's "Devil's Night" episode.

The Town That Dreaded Sundown (both the original 1977 film and its 2014 sequel) is a gore-filled slasher (pictured above) that might seem too over-the-top to be real, but its inspiration comes from a string of deranged killings in Texarkana in the Spring of 1946 by the Phantom Killer. Over the course of 10 weeks, eight people (all couples) were attacked in twisted ways (many of the women were sexually assaulted, and most victims were shot multiple times). Curfews were initiated and businesses began to close early, leaving streets looking like a ghost town by nightfall (hence the film's name). The killer was never found, but the teenagers in his first attack described him as a large man wearing a plain white mask that had holes cut out for his eyes and mouth.

Jeffrey Dahmer is one of America's most well-known serial killers and sex offenders, who murdered 17 men between 1978 and 1991. After killing his victims (whom he lured to his grandmother's basement with the promise of drugs and alcohol), he would mutilate their bodies, photograph them, and perform sexual acts on the corpses. He kept their genitals or skulls as mementos and often ate their remains or used chemical means to dispose of the rest of the bodies. Dahmer was captured in 1991 and put in prison for 16 life terms, but his time was cut short after fellow inmate Christopher Scarver killed him in 1994.

Dahmer's lengthy killing spree has inspired a number of films: The Secret Life: Jeffrey Dahmer, The Jeffrey Dahmer Files (pictured above), Dahmer (starring Jeremy Renner), Raising Jeffrey Dahmer, and more. Most recently, the acclaimed graphic novel based on Dahmer's childhood, My Friend Dahmer, has been adapted as a soon-to-be-released film starring Nat Wolff, Anne Heche, and Vincent Kartheiser. As far as TV, Dahmer's likeness made an appearance in the same "Devil's Night" episode of American Horror Story that Gacy's did.

The idea of backpacking through the Australian wilderness might sound fun for some, but for anyone who's seen the Wolf Creek movies, it probably sends a few chills down your spine. In the '90s, a man named Ivan Milat (later known as the Backpack Killer) would hunt down campers in remote areas of Australia so he could torture and kill them in gruesome ways. One woman was decapitated, another was found shot in the head 10 times, and her companion had been stabbed so brutally that it seems likely she was paralyzed midattack while he continued to wound her. He murdered seven people in total and was sentenced to six years imprisonment for an attack on a man who survived and then seven consecutive life sentences for each of the other murders.

If that doesn't frighten you, you should give Wolf Creek a watch. Milat inspired the terrifying franchise, which spawned two films and one TV miniseries and follows the activities of Mick Taylor (John Jarratt, pictured above), a psychotic man in the Outback who kidnaps and brutally tortures a group of young backpackers.

A 2003 Korean crime drama called Memories of Murder (pictured above) depicts the harrowing story of Seoul's first serial killer, whose murders are known as the Hwaseong Serial Murders and earned him comparisons to the Zodiac Killer. The unidentified killer murdered 10 women between 1986 and 1991, all of whom were found strangled to death with their own clothes in the rural city of Hwaseong in South Korea's Gyeonggi Province.

Of all the serial killers on this list, Edward Theodore "Ed" Gein, also known as the Butcher of Plainfield, is one of the most disturbing. His murders and grave-robbing habit led him to be the inspiration for everyone from Norman Bates (Psycho) to Leatherface (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre). As a young man, Gein became obsessed with his religious fanatic of a mother and began robbing graves containing recently buried female bodies after she died in 1945. He'd cut off body parts as souvenirs (and then return the rest of the body to the grave), which led to him experimenting with necrophilia and human taxidermy.

He tanned the skins of the corpses to make corsets, leggings, belts made from female nipples, and masks (much like the Buffalo Bill character in Silence of the Lambs) so he could make a "woman suit" and become his mother. He eventually went on to kill two women in his town in 1957. Once caught, Gein pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity and was committed to a criminal mental hospital. Around a decade later, he stood trial again and was found guilty of murder and sent to the Central State Hospital in Wisconsin and the Mendota Mental Health Institute, where he later died of heart failure in 1984.

(Michael Wincott's portrayal of Gein in Hitchcock is pictured above)

If Aileen Wuornos (pictured above) looks familiar, it's likely due to her appearance in the "Devil's Night" episode of American Horror Story or Charlize Theron's Oscar-winning portrayal of the murderous prostitute in Monster. The 2003 film documents Wuornos's murders of seven men (although she was only tried for six), all shot at point-blank range in Florida between 1989 and 1990. She attempted to defend her actions by claiming her victims had raped her (or attempted to rape her) and that everything she did was an act of self-defense. She was executed by lethal injection in 2002 in Florida, and her last words are rather odd: "Yes, I would just like to say I'm sailing with the rock, and I'll be back, like Independence Day, with Jesus. June 6, like the movie. Big mother ship and all, I'll be back, I'll be back."