List of United States criminals
This is a list of American people who have been convicted of serious crimes, or are notable for their criminal activities.
List of those Americans convicted of murders
Murderers
Americans convicted of murder.
By Region of Country they are from in alphabetical order
Alaska / Hawaii
Midwest
Mountainwest
Northeast
Northwest
South
Southeast
Southwest
Serial killers
- Gerald Stano – convicted murderer of 41 women; executed in 1998.
- Randall Woodfield – aka "The I-5 Killer" and "The I-5 Bandit"; convicted of four murders; believed responsible for 14 others.
- Robert Shulman – convicted of murdering five prostitutes between 1991 and 1996.
- Tommy Lynn Sells – convicted of only one murder; admitted to murdering dozens of people across the United States, possibly in excess of 70 although only six are confirmed.
- Efren Saldivar – respiratory therapist who killed six patients, possibly as many as 120.
- Arthur Shawcross – aka "The Genesee River Killer"; convicted of 12 murders; confessed to one more.
- Lemuel Smith – confessed to the murders of five people, including an on-duty female prison guard.
- Wayne Williams – convicted of two murders; police claim his arrest solved 23 others in a string of 29.
- Gwendolyn Graham and Cathy Wood
- Donald Harvey – aka "Angel of Death"; hospital orderly; confessed to more than 80 "mercy killings" with 37 confirmed killings.
- William Heirens – aka "The Lipstick Killer"; confessed to three murders spanning from June 1945 to January 1946.
- Michael Swango – physician and surgeon who poisoned over 30 of his patients and colleagues.
- Henry Lee Lucas – convicted of 11 murders and confessed to approximately 3000 others, although most of his confessions are considered outlandish; a task force set up to investigate his claims suggested that the true number of his murders may be as high as 213.
- Leonard Lake and Charles Ng – ex-Marines and survivalists; killed at least 11 people and suspected of 25; collected and murdered female sex slaves.
- John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo – aka "Beltway Snipers"; Muhammad is convicted of seven murders so far and awaiting prosecution for nine others; Malvo was convicted of, plead guilty to, or confessed to at least nine murders.
- Donald Henry Gaskins – aka "Meanest Man in America"; convicted of nine murders; confessed to more than 200; executed on September 6, 1991.
- Ed Gein – two known victims, one suspected victim, four missing persons; elements of Gein's life and crimes have inspired, at least in part, the films Psycho and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and the novel/movie The Silence of the Lambs.
- Kristen Gilbert – aka the "Angel of Death"; nurse convicted of killing four by epinephrine injection.
- Earle Nelson – aka "Gorilla Man"; necrophiliac convicted and hanged for one murder; implicated in about 20 others.
- Marie Noe – murdered eight of her children between 1949 and 1968.
- Carl Panzram – murderer, rapist and arsonist; convicted of two murders; confessed to 19 others; executed in 1930.
- Keith Hunter Jesperson – Canadian serial killer convicted in the United States.
- Dr. Jack Kevorkian - Dr. Kevorkian became famous in the late 1980s and early 1990s as a supporter of assisted suicide, and was lucky enough to have three acquittals and a mistrial before being convicted of the second-degree murder of Thomas Youk in 1999.
- Dennis Rader – aka the "BTK Killer"; killed ten people between 1974 and 1991.
- Carroll Cole – killed 16 people between 1948 and 1980; executed in 1985.
- Alton Coleman – multi-state killer whose killings took place during two months in 1984 aided by Debra Denise Brown; was convicted of murder in three states.
- Andrew Cunanan – murdered five people, including fashion designer Gianni Versace, in a cross-country journey during a three-month period in 1997, ending with Cunanan's suicide, at the age of 27.
- Nannie Doss – aka "The Giggling Granny" and "The Jolly Black Widow"; serial poisoner who killed 11 family members.
- Albert Fish – aka the "Werewolf of Wisteria"; sadist and pedophile who cannibalized several children; convicted of one murder, confessed to two others
- Wayne Adam Ford – aka "Wayward Wayne"; confessed to murdering four women; believed to have killed others.
- Joseph Paul Franklin – racist serial killer who targeted interracial couples and attempted to assassinate Larry Flynt and Vernon Jordan; convicted of 11 murders and confessed to nine others.
- Paul Dennis Reid – killed seven people during armed robberies between February and April 1997.
- Gerald Gallego Jr. and Charlene Williams – aka the "Gallego Sex Slaves Killers"; kidnapped, raped and killed victims in the late 1970s; most of them were teenagers.
- Julio González - convicted of arson and murder of 87 people in the Happy Land Fire.
Alaska / Hawaii
- Robert Hansen – Alaskan baker who killed prostitutes at his cabin; convicted of four murders but admitted to 11 others.
Midwest
- Belle Gunness – murder-for-profit killer who murdered her suitors and children in Indiana.
- Tillie Klimek – Chicago woman who poisoned five husbands; sentenced to life imprisonment.
- Herb Baumeister – suspected of killing 20+ men along I-70; fled and committed suicide after remains of eleven were found on his Westfield, Indiana property .
- Martha Beck and Raymond Fernandez – the "Lonely Hearts Killers"; killed at least three women and one child in the 1940s but suspected in up to 20 murders in New York and Michigan.
- Bloody Benders – family who killed guests at their inn in Labette County, Kansas in 1872 .
- Richard Biegenwald – convicted of killing five people in the early 1980s in the Asbury Park, New Jersey area; suspected in at least six other murders.
- Terry Blair – Kansas City serial killer and rapist; active 1982–2004.
- Jeffrey Dahmer – Milwaukee, Wisconsin cannibal who kept heads, skulls and body parts in his apartment for sexual gratification; convicted of 15 murders, but believed responsible for at least two others.
- John Wayne Gacy – aka "Killer Clown"; killer of at least 33 men and boys; kept bodies buried under his Chicago home.
- Lorenzo Gilyard – killed up to 13 prostitutes in the Kansas City area 1977 to 1993.
- Jeffrey Gorton – convicted of two rape-murders in Michigan, suspected of more.
- Herman Mudgett – better known as H.H. Holmes; active from 1890 to 1894 during Chicago's 1893 World's Columbian Exposition; convicted of only one murder but definitively tied to at least 8 more and confessed to a total of 27.
- Timothy Krajcir – confessed to killing more than nine women—five in Missouri and four others in Illinois and Pennsylvania.
- Michigan murders (John Norman Collins and Gary Leiterman) – committed separately in Ypsilanti and Ann Arbor between 1967 and 1969.
- Leslie Irvin – aka "Mad Dog"; convicted of killing six people in Indiana in the mid-1950s; his Supreme Court case set a precedent for fair trials of highly publicized defendants.
- Christopher Peterson – aka the "Shotgun Killer", confessed to shooting seven people with a shotgun in a killing spree spanning from October 30, 1990 to December 18, 1990 in Indiana.
- John Edward Robinson – aka the "Cyber Sex Killer"; lured victims through the internet; convicted of murdering six women in Missouri and Kansas.
- Maury Travis – St. Louis area torture killer of 12-17 prostitutes from 2000 to 2002.
- Gwendolyn Graham and Cathy Wood – Michigan duo who murdered five elderly nursing home residents in their care and claimed to have killed another.
- Ángel Maturino Reséndiz – killed nine people in Texas, Kentucky, and Illinois.
- Coral Eugene Watts – convicted of two murders; admitted to killing 80 people in Texas and Michigan; possibly guilty of 100 murders.
Mountainwest
Northeast
- David Berkowitz – aka "Son of Sam" and "The .44 Caliber Killer"; convicted of six murders in New York.
- Kendall Francois – serial killer from Poughkeepsie, New York who targeted prostitutes; after strangling the women, he would store them in various crawl spaces in and around his home.
- Robert Berdella – convicted of killing six men in 1988 in Kansas City, Missouri; sexually tortured and dismembered his victims.
- Kenneth Bianchi and Angelo Buono, Jr. – aka the "Hillside Strangler"; killers of 13 women and possibly involved in three other killings.
- Joel Rifkin – murdered 17 women in the New York City and Long Island areas.
- Peter Kudzinowski – killed children in New Jersey in the 1920s.
- Frederick Mors - Austrian who killed seventeen elderly patients by poisoning in New York.
- Vincent Johnson – aka the "Brooklyn Strangler"; a homeless crack addict who killed at least five prostitutes.
- Paul John Knowles – raped and murdered 18 people.
- Nathaniel White – convicted of stabbing to death six women in the Hudson Valley, New York area from 1991 to 1992.
- Marybeth Tinning – New York woman who smothered nine of her children to death.
- Michael Bruce Ross – raped and murdered seven women in Connecticut.
- Altemio Sanchez – aka the "Bike Path Rapist"; responsible for three murders and numerous rapes spanning over a 25-year period in Buffalo, New York; currently serving three consecutive 75 years-to-life sentences for the murders.
- Heriberto Seda – New York City copycat killer of the "Zodiac Killer" active from 1990 to 1994; convicted of shooting eight individuals, killing three; sentenced to life imprisonment in 1998.
- Lawrence Bittaker and Roy Norris - kidnapped, tortured, raped and murdered five girls in 1979.
- William Bonin – aka "The Freeway Killer"; with several accomplices, claimed the lives of 20 boys in California.
- Waneta Hoyt – New York woman who murdered her five children.
- Albert DeSalvo – aka "The Boston Strangler"; convicted of unrelated rapes; DeSalvo was never indicted for the Strangler murders, although he did confess to them.
- Michael Bear Carson and Suzan Carson – nomadic hippie killers involved in the counter-culture movement; suspects in 12 homicides; sentenced to life imprisonment for three San Francisco Bay Area murders in 1983.
- Charles Cullen – nurse in New Jersey and Pennsylvania who killed as many as 40 patients through lethal injection.
- Jerry Brudos – aka "The Lust Killer" and "Shoe Fetish Slayer"; killed at least five women in Oregon.
Northwest
South
Southeast
- Gerard John Schaefer – Florida police officer who killed up to 34 women and girls.
- Danny Rolling – pleaded guilty to murdering five students in Florida; executed in 2006.
- Ottis Toole – Henry Lee Lucas' accomplice; convicted of six murders in Florida; confessed to but never tried for Adam Walsh's murder.
- Aileen Wuornos – shot six men dead in Florida; executed in 2002.
- Ted Bundy – law student who raped and murdered more than 35 women in six states; executed in Florida State Prison on January 24, 1989.
- Paul Durousseau – murdered 7 in southeast United States between 1997 and 2003; may have killed while stationed in Germany with the Army.
Southwest
Arizona and New Mexico
- David Parker Ray – convicted of rape and torture and sentenced to 224 years in prison; FBI believes he was responsible for the deaths of 60 women in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico.
Southern California
- William Suff – aka the "Riverside Killer"; killed up to 19 women near Riverside, California.
- Gordon Stewart Northcott – aka the "Wineville Chicken Coop Murders"; California man who confessed to kidnapping, raping and murdering nine young boys with the aid of his mother, Sarah Louise Northcott in the 1920s; suspected of the murder of nearly 30, executed in 1930.
- Harvey Glatman – Californian rapist and killer of three women; lured women to pose for "bondage photographs"; executed September 18, 1959.
- Mack Ray Edwards – convicted of murdering three children after confessing to the murders of six in Los Angeles County between 1953 and 1969; claimed at one point to have killed as many as 18.
- Doug Clark and Carol M. Bundy – aka "Sunset Strip Killers"; killed at least seven people during 1980.
- Juan Corona – California killer convicted of murdering 25 men in 1971.
- Dana Sue Gray – convicted of murder of three elderly women and attempted murder of a fourth in California.
- Michael Hughes – killed four women in the Los Angeles area between 1992 and 1993; charged in 2008 with raping and murdering four additional women between 1986 and 1993.
- Patrick Kearney – necrophiliac convicted of 21 murders in California and admitted to seven other murders.
- Edmund Kemper – started killing when he was 15 years old in Santa Cruz, California; convicted of six murders and implicated in four others.
- Herbert Mullin – schizophrenic in Santa Cruz, California who killed people to prevent earthquakes; convicted of 10 murders and confessed to three others.
- Randy Kraft – convicted of the murders of 16 young men and boys; suspected of 51 others in California.
- Chester Turner – murderer of women in Los Angeles, California; convicted of 12 murders and linked through DNA evidence to another.
- Richard Ramirez – aka the "Night Stalker"; terrorized Los Angeles in 1984 and 1985; convicted of 14 murders.
Southwest Texas
- Joe Ball – aka "The Alligator Man"; killed at least 20 women in the early 20th century in Texas.
- Dean Corll, Elmer Wayne Henley and David Brooks – committed the Houston Mass Murders in the 1970s.
- Genene Jones – Texas pediatric nurse who poisoned infants in her care. Convicted of only one murder but suspected of 10 or more others.
List of those Americans convicted of other crimes
List of convicted insider traders / securities fraud
Alaska / Hawaii
Midwest
Mountainwest
Northeast
Northwest
South
Southeast
Southwest
See also