The Amazing Stuff

When you think of a serial killer, you probably envision a solitary figure — probably a male — stalking the night with a weapon and an ugly leer. That’s often true, but sometimes, the nastiest people come in pairs.

Throughout the 20th century, there have been some notable killers that have made this deadly pastime into a couple’s affair. This just proves that getting a boyfriend or girlfriend isn’t the benchmark of stability. In fact, as far as these couples are concerned, it’s quite the opposite.

1. Suzan and James Carson

Ranker

After doing many drugs and moving to a marijuana farm in San Francisco, these two took it upon themselves to kill anyone they felt gave off an “evil energy.” Their first victim was their roommate, who they bludgeoned with a frying pan and stabbed almost a dozen times. They killed at least two more people, and received life sentences.

2. Charles Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate — the Badlands Killers

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Inspiring films like Natural Born Killers, these two young murderers swept across the American Midwest in the 1950s, killing almost everyone in their path. It started when 14-year-old Fugate’s mother and stepfather disapproved of her 19-year-old boyfriend, Starkweather, so Starkweather murdered them, along with Fugate’s two-year-old sister. They killed 11 people and two dogs in eight days before being captured. Starkweather was executed, and Fugate got a life sentence. However, she paroled in 1976, and now lives in Michigan.

3. Raymond Fernandez and Martha Beck — the Lonely Hearts Killers

Express UK

While in prison, Fernandez became interested in the occult, and believed that he could use these powers to woo women, steal their money, and disappear. When he got out, he promptly began scamming women. Then he met Beck, who wanted to stay with him. She even dumped her two kids at the Salvation Army to do so.

She agreed to let Fernandez continue his scams, but her jealousy caused her to attack and kill some of the women. Eventually, the couple decided it was easier to just kill them all. Finally, someone noticed when a young widow and her two-year-old went missing, and the couple was finally caught. Together, they killed about 20 people. They were both sentenced to death by electrocution in Sing Sing’s famous chair.

4. Faye and Ray Copeland

Wikimedia Commons

This couple proves that old people aren’t always innocent. Ray and Faye, 76 and 69, respectively, lured drifters onto their property in the early 1990s, hiring them to buy cattle with fake checks. They’d then sell the cattle for a huge markup and murder the drifter to avoid giving them a cut. They killed five people this way, and were only caught when the sixth drifter spied human remains on the property.

Evil until the end, Faye tried to get out of a conviction by saying that Ray abused her, but her complicity was proven when a quilt made from the dead drifters’ clothes was found in her possession. Given the death penalty, Faye’s sentence was commuted to life. Ray died in 1993, and Faye died of natural causes 10 years later.

5. Gwendolyn Graham and Catherine May Wood

Crime Museum

This couple met while working at a nursing home in Michigan. When the sex got dull, they got their thrills by murdering elderly women at the home, and then having sex next to the bodies. They even bragged about it to coworkers, but no one believed them. Graham and Wood broke up when Wood refused to kill a woman just for fun, and she would eventually break down and turn Graham and herself in. Graham got life, but for her cooperation, Wood got 20 years.

6. Henry Lee Lucas and Otis Toole

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This pair met at a soup kitchen in 1973 and quickly became lovers — and killers. It’s not clear when the killing started, but when Lucas was arrested for a weapons charge in 1983, he started bragging about all the people he’d killed.

Upon hearing this, Toole also began confessing, and together, the couple admitted to hundreds of murders. The exact details and truths were never uncovered, but their information helped close 246 missing persons cases. Unlike many of the other killers, they had no preferred method of killing and targeted anyone, regardless of age, race, or sex. They were both given life sentences.

7. Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka

Toronto Sun

As a twisted “wedding present,” Homolka gave Bernardo her 15-year-old sister. After drugging the girl, the couple raped her while videotaping the crime. The sister, barely conscious, ended up choking to death on her own vomit. The death was not ruled a homicide, so the couple continued raping and murdering girls. However, Homolka turned on Bernardo in 1993 after he beat her, and negotiated a 12-year sentence in exchange for her cooperation. He was sentenced to life, and she was released in 2005.

8. Myra Hindley and Ian Brady

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Hindley fell in love with Brady and his neo-Nazi ideals in the 1960s, even dying her hair blond to be more “Aryan.” Of course, that was the least of it. They hatched a plan for the perfect murder, and kidnapped, raped, and murdered a 16-year-old girl. This led to the similar attacks and murders of five more children between 1963 and 1965. Eventually, though, their perfect crimes unraveled and they were both sentenced to life in prison. Brady is currently spending the remainder of his life in a psychiatric ward.

9. Charlene and Gerald Gallego

Fame Images

From 1978 to 1980, this couple raped and murdered nine young women, including a 13-yaer-old and a pregnant woman. Apparently, they shared a twisted fantasy of having “young, disposable sex slaves.” They were finally apprehended when someone witnessed them kidnapping a young woman and wrote down the license plate number. Charlene testified against Gerald and got 16 years, while Gerald got the death penalty, but he died in prison before it was carried out.

10. Fred and Rosemary West

Criminal Minds Wikia

These two were messed up from the start. Rosemary murdered Fred’s stepdaughter and, with Fred’s approval, worked as a prostitute in his home, often with their children present. Fred also took to sexually abusing his daughters.

Between 1973 and 1987, the couple murdered nine women, including one of their own daughters. This was the murder that eventually led the police to investigate, and in all, the couple was charged with 21 counts of murder. Fred hanged himself while awaiting trial, and Rosemary got life in prison.

(via All Day)

So if that doesn’t make you feel a little less than romantic, we don’t know what will. Luckily, these creeps have all been caught.

The world will always need good nurses. Years of schooling and late-night shifts make it one of the most demanding fields. The majority of nurses in this country are dedicated to upholding the welfare of mankind, but there are a select few who are just as dedicated to eradicating it.

Here are some of the most notorious serial-killing nurses of all time.

Daniela Poggiali

CBC News

Nicknamed the “Angel of Death,” this Italian nurse is accused of killing 96 of her patients between 2013 and 2014. This would make her the second most prolific serial killer in history. Her motive? Well, if she thought that certain patients were annoying, she killed them. She murdered people with complicated cases by overdosing them on drugs. She even took selfies with their corpses afterwards.

Charles Cullen

Wikipedia

Suspected to have killed up to 300 patients during his 16-year stint as a nurse, Charles Cullen may be the most prolific killer in America. Cullen injected his patients with lethal amounts of digoxin, which helped his crimes go undetected. He claimed that he only killed them out of mercy. Despite being helpful in the investigation, Cullen was sentenced to 11 consecutive life sentences with no chance for parole.

Amy Archer-Gilligan

Wikipedia

Because of the 60 deaths that took place in her Windsor, Connecticut, nursing home between 1907 and 1917, people grew suspicious of Amy Archer-Gilligan’s practices. It was eventually discovered that she was lacing patients’ food with arsenic. Several of her patients and five of her husbands died this way…after naming Archer-Gilligan as the sole benefactor in all of their wills.

Genene Jones

Wikipedia

While most of these serial-killing nurses went after elderly patients, Genene Jones is known for killing infants. Jones was addicted to the gratitude she received after reviving babies from critical conditions. Between 1971 and 1984, she injected babies with digoxin in order to turn around and save them. As many as 60 infants died after the initial injection.

Benjamin Geen

Murderpedia

Benjamin Geen was caught with a lethal dose of muscle relaxers in his possession back in 2004 after a suspicious number of his patients died of cardiac arrest. It seems that Geen got a kick out of watching people resuscitate patients, but many of his victims could not be saved.

Because of the inherent intimacy nurses have with vulnerable people, heath professionals with murderous tendencies are particularly disturbing. It’s important to remember, however, that these cases are extremely rare. You can rest assured that most nurses really do make it their mission to help you.

Many of the serial killers we cover focused on killing random strangers. That makes their behavior even more disturbing, since in most cases, murderers have personal connections to their victims.

But no serial killer in history has killed more of her own family members than Nannie Doss — also known as the “Giggling Granny.” A head injury at a young age, paired with her own obsession with having the “perfect husband,” led her on a killing spree that spanned three decades between the 1920s and 1950s. Victims included four of the men she married, two of her own children, her sister, her grandchildren, and two of her mothers-in-law.

In 1923, at age 16, Nannie Doss married Charley Braggs after dating for just four months.

Murderpedia

They had four children together. She became overwhelmed while taking care of both her children and Braggs’ mother, so she began drinking heavily.

Mysteriously, Doss’ middle two children died of “food poisoning.”

Murderpedia

After that, her mother-in-law passed away. Braggs suspected that his wife was the culprit, so the two divorced. This left the murderous Ms. Doss with the remaining children.

She met her second husband in 1929 in the classifieds section of a romantic magazine.

Murderpedia

Although they were married for 16 years, Frank Harrelson was a drunk and a criminal, and one night, he raped Doss after a few hours of binge drinking. Doss soon put rat poison in his drink and killed him.

Her daughter Melvina eventually had two children of her own.

Murderpedia

While under the care of her grandmother, the youngest granddaughter died. Another night, after Melvina returned from visiting her father, she found that her other child had died.

The Giggling Granny then married a man named Arlie Lanning, but he soon met a fate that was eerily similar to Harrelson’s.

Murderpedia

His mother also died shortly thereafter. Doss then moved in with her sister who also — you guessed it — mysteriously died. The insatiable killer then collected life insurance from all three.

Between 1953 and 1954, Doss wasted no time killing her fourth and fifth husbands.

Murderpedia

When doctors found traces of arsenic in her husband Samuel Doss’ system, police began questioning Nannie Doss about the trail of death she curiously left in her wake.

The Giggling Granny eventually admitted to all of the murders.

Murderpedia

Still, she was only tried for the fifth husband’s murder. She served less than 10 years of her life sentence before dying of leukemia.

She didn’t get her chilling nickname until she started talking to the authorities about how she killed her husbands, giggling all the while. She said that she was driven by the dream of finding a perfect husband.

To me, the creepiest part about Nannie Doss’ many murders is the fact that she got away with the spree for so long, despite being the common denominator in each death.