Killer Stories with Harvey Guillén

John Joseph Joubert was plagued by disturbing daydreams, along with a horrifying urge to hurt little boys, and in the 1980s, he finally acted on both. But when he targeted a teacher's young students, her determination signalled the end of his deadly spree. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Having graduated from brutal assaults to murders, Paul Ogorzow felt untouchable as he rode the rails, throwing his victims off speeding trains. But every train has to stop somewhere, and Paul's was headed for one very specific ending: swift and brutal justice. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Coming of age alongside Adolf Hitler's political rise, Paul Ogorzow took his cue from the Nazi party, and looked at some of his fellow Germans as little more than rodents to be stamped out. He took advantage of World War II to carry out his terrifying attacks around Berlin. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

There are few criminals so reviled as a child killer. David Elliot Penton was one of them. His crimes were so horrendous, he earned the nickname "The Bogey Man." Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A lifelong drifter and con man, Roy Melanson charmed and manipulated his way into his victims’ lives beginning in the 1960s. As his crimes became more gruesome, his vagabond lifestyle made him virtually impossible to track down. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Avoiding capture as Amherst’s terrifying “Bike Path Rapist” emboldened Sanchez to commit his first murder in 1990. His crimes were escalating — but inexplicably, after nearly two decades of violence, he vanished. Twelve years later, the Bike Path Killer returned. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

An elusive rapist stalked areas around Buffalo, New York, for decades beginning in the late 1970s. When he moved to a city once dubbed the “Safest City in America,” he began using his signature weapon to not just subdue… but to kill. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Harry Powers lived a life shrouded in mystery, so tracing his origins is difficult. But here's what we know: he was a conman without a conscience, and he was a ruthless killer whose victim count might be higher than anyone ever imagined... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In 1973, 7-year-old Susie Jaeger fell asleep in a tent with her siblings while on a camping trip with family. When her siblings woke up, the tent had been slashed open and Susie was gone. A team of profilers believed David Meirhofer was responsible for the kidnapping — they just had to prove it. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

By 1999, Sells had murdered men, women and children in multiple states, and showed no signs of slowing down. He might never have been stopped, had he not attacked a little girl who survived to identify him, and finally put an end to his decades-long murder spree. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

For over 20 years, Tommy Lynn Sells hitchhiked across the U.S., killing indiscriminately and without mercy. What started as a revenge fantasy involving his childhood abuser grew into a deadly impulse that would claim nearly two dozen lives. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

By the beginning of 2011, Bruce McArthur had killed and dismembered two men, hiding their bodies in enormous planters at a client's house. But when police let him slip through their hands, he was free to kill again. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

For most of his life, Bruce McArthur led an unremarkable existence. But in the 1990s, he split from his wife and moved to Toronto's gay village — free to be his true self. Unfortunately, McArthur's true self was violent, bloodthirsty... and murderous. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

After amassing wealth and influence as a spiritual advisor in the 1980s, Adolfo Constanzo set his sights on the lucrative drug trade in Matamoros. To claim a piece for himself, he needed more power. And for that, he turned to one thing: human sacrifice. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Schooled in the darkest corners of his family’s Afro-Carribean religion, Adolfo Constanzo decided to make his fortune using magic granted through animal sacrifices. In Mexico City, he grew his power and esteem — but he wanted something more. He wanted revenge. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

By 1828, Burke and Hare’s scheme of murdering people and selling their bodies was making them rich. But eventually, one curious woman crashed their entire operation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

When a tenant at their boarding house died in 1827, William Burke and William Hare found a way to make some extra money: selling bodies to a medical school. But to keep it up, they’d need a fresh supply of dead bodies — and those were hard to come by. Naturally, at least. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Having moved from break-ins to aggressive sexual assault, David Russell Williams carefully planned his first horrific murder in late 2009. It was not his last. But the high-ranking military officer could only fly under the radar for so long. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

As an officer in the Canadian Armed Forces, David Russell Williams had a spotless record for decades before beginning a breaking-and-entering spree in 2007. Stealing into women’s houses, he photographed himself wearing their underwear, setting the baseline for crimes that would later include rape and murder. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

After his first murder in San Francisco, Richard Ramirez headed back to Los Angeles to begin a killing spree that had the whole city terrified. His brutal attacks came after dark and without warning, earning him the chilling nickname "Night Stalker.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

A troubled relationship with his father, his religion, and the demonic visions he saw during seizures dominated Richard Ramirez’s childhood in the 1960s. When he witnesses a horrific crime at the hands of a sadistic cousin, he comes face to face with his own dark nature. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Organized and meticulous, Timothy Wilson Spencer evaded suspicion until a detective began connecting the dots between Arlington’s “Masked Rapist” and Richmond’s “South Side Strangler.” The 1988 case against him helped exonerate a wrongfully convicted man, and made forensic science history. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Growing up in Arlington, Virginia in the 1960s, Timothy Wilson Spencer displayed an alarming interest in torturing animals and burglarizing homes. With practiced cruelty and stealth, he eventually became known as “The Masked Rapist” for his attacks on women. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Born in 1935, Florencio Fernández grew up in a region of Argentina nicknamed the “fortress of folklore.” As a teenager, destitute and alone, he watched a film at a local theater that would change his life — and inspire his crimes. That film’s name? Dracula. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Salvator Perrone’s early life in the 1950s is a murky mystery, but by the time he was in his 60s, the failed fashion entrepreneur had a grudge against the world — and he was ready to exact his revenge. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

By the 1980s, Ted Kaczynski had set off several bombs, causing only minor injuries — but for him, it wasn’t enough. What had started as a plot for revenge grew into an unrelenting need to change the world. To do that, he needed to kill. The reign of the Unabomber had begun. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Spotting his genius at a young age, Ted Kaczynski’s parents pushed their son to academic excellence — but Ted never found a true home in the hallowed halls of academia. Instead, by 1969, he was a former math professor with a festering hatred for the modern world. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

By Thanksgiving 1986, Gary Heidnik had captured a woman and locked her in his basement, where he intended on making her carry his children. But Gary wanted an entire “birthing harem.” Over the next four months, he lured five more women to his Philadelphia home… Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Estranged from his family, Gary Heidnik’s behavior grew more and more troubling as he grew older. By 1976, no one was around to notice when he started digging a pit in his basement — one big enough to hold a person... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

When a six-year-old girl was brutally murdered in Chicago in 1945, the public and the press demanded answers. Luckily, police found the killer by chance when they arrested a teenage burglar named William Heirens. Or did they? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Growing up in a family that didn’t have a lot of money, William Heirens turned to burglary to ease his economic anxiety. It became a compulsion he couldn’t control, and got him into trouble with the law in the early 1940s. Then, one day, it changed his life forever. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Herbert Mullin believed he was saving the world. After all, God had told him that murdering people would prevent catastrophic earthquakes. So, with his heaven-sent mission, he set out to kill and kill again. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Throughout his childhood in the 1950s and ‘60s, Herbert Mullin's life seemed decidedly idyllic. But tragedy struck when he was 18. In the aftermath, Mullin began hearing voices — and they told him to kill. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Having killed and dismembered his first victim, Robert Bordella was anxious to take another person captive. He kidnapped and tortured multiple men in succession, drugging them with tranquilizers and documenting his actions in a diary — until someone eventually escaped. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Inspired by a 1965 horror film called The Collector, Robert Berdella harbored dark fantasies about abuse and control. As a college student, he acted out his sadism on animals, and later, in the early ‘80s, on a teenager named Jerry Howell. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In November 1997, John Bunting claimed his sixth victim, and successfully passed it off as a suicide. From there, he and his accomplices moved at alarming speed, torturing and killing another six people until police finally caught up. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Arriving in South Australia in the 1980s, John Bunting surrounded himself with people he could easily manipulate: a small group of men who hated pedophiles and gay men, and were determined to rid their community of both. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

After his first murder, Steven Zelich couldn't bear to let go of his victim, and kept her body close by. But eventually he began to crave the same powerful feeling he'd had the first time, and the hunt for his next target began... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Once a police officer who loved the authority and respect his position brought him, Steven Zelich's life took a turn in the late ‘90s when the power went to his head. His quest for the thrill of control led him to the world of BDSM… and eventually, murder. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Once a promising intelligence officer, Ray Fernandez transformed into a career conman, swindling lonely women out of their savings. When he met Martha Beck in 1947, his Lonely Hearts con became a deadly scheme of spiralling jealousies and stolen fortunes. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If love makes you do something evil, does that make you evil, too? In the late 1970s, Gerald Gallego twisted himself around Charlene’s heart and didn’t let go. The couple, later known as “The Sex Slave Killers,” worked in tandem to kidnap and murder ten women. Was Charlene a victim, too? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Following a whirlwind romance, Alton Coleman and Debra Brown embarked on a violent rampage that turned the summer of 1984 bloody. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

They say that “love is a many-splendored thing.” But for Ray and Faye Copeland, it was a thing of violence. The couple’s murderous crimes made them two of the oldest people ever sentenced to death in the United States. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

By 1985, the Monster of Florence had claimed 16 lives. Unfortunately, authorities were no closer to catching the killer than when they'd started their investigation, and the trail was getting colder every day... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

One of Italy’s most notorious serial killers has never (definitively) been identified. The mysterious Monster of Florence murdered couples in their cars, beginning in 1974. The crimes were so horrific that all of Florence was on edge, and the hunt for the killer was vast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

By 1984, Nance had revamped his reputation and settled into a comfortable routine in his hometown. But as he grew fixated on his boss, his nice-guy exterior evaporated, revealing a cold and calculating killer. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

As a teenager, Wayne Nance developed an interest in Satanism that may have led to his first murder. He became obsessed with the idea of making a human sacrifice — and in the spring of 1974, he boasted to a friend: “It’s been done.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

His victims’ deaths were often ruled “unnatural and accidental,” leaving Gilbert Paul Jordan free to perfect his M.O. — forcing Indigenous women in Vancouver to drink themselves to death. Unable to keep him behind bars, police surveilled the barber until they could catch him in the act. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

An alcoholic from his teenage years onward, Gilbert Paul Jordan spent his young adulthood in 1950s Vancouver tallying up arrests for theft, assault, and drug possession. Then he discovered a crime he wouldn’t be punished for: plying a victim with alcohol until she was poisoned to death. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

By the 1990s, Ángel Maturino Reséndiz was a seasoned murderer using America’s extensive railroad system to strike new victims, then flee. But eventually, authorities caught onto the pattern in his murders. In 1999, their investigation came to a surprising stop. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices