Killer Stories with Harvey Guillén

From Adolfo Costanzo and the Narcosatanists to the gruesome Chicago Rippers, these horrific groups showed that fears of murderous devil-worshipping cults weren't entirely unfounded. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In the 1980s, “Satanic Panic” was a mass hysteria that consumed communities and ruined lives—all over things that never even happened. In this new five-part series, we’re examining the origins of the panic, tracing back through the decades to see how the fear of Satan’s influence in society swept across North America. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In the 1980s, “Satanic Panic” was a mass hysteria that consumed communities and ruined lives—all over things that never even happened. In this new five-part series, we’re examining the origins of the panic, tracing back through the decades to see how the fear of Satan’s influence in society swept across North America. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In the fall of 1977, Los Angeles was on high alert, so 43-year-old Angelo Buono Jr. and 26-year-old Kenny Bianchi knew they had to play it safe. But as their death toll grew even higher, their relationship began to crumble. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

These killer cousins terrorized Los Angeles in the late ‘70s. Despite very different upbringings, Angelo Buono Jr. and Kenny Bianchi both formed sadistic attitudes toward women that led to them cruising the streets of Hollywood, posing as undercover cops, patrolling for victims. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

After their first brutal murder, Suzan and Michael Carson fled San Francisco, intent on continuing their quest to rid the world of witches. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

They set out to murder witches in the early 1980s, moving up and down the coast of the Pacific Northwest. Suzan Carson believed she was destined to rid the world of evil… All she needed was a willing follower to wield the knife. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On the outside, Karla Homolka and Paul Bernardo appeared to be a perfect couple—but they held a dark secret: Paul’s sadistic aggressions were seemingly unstoppable, spurred on by Karla’s compliance. The secrets—and the bodies—piled up. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

When Paul Bernardo met his bride-to-be Karla Homolka in October 1987, he had already raped his first victim. But Paul's sadistic sexual appetite only seemed to deepen Karla's desire for him. And when his sick interest turned toward her 15-year-old sister, Karla let one thing guide her next move: her unrelenting need to please him. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

By torturing and killing his fellow inmate, Robert Maudsley won his escape from Broadmoor Mental Hospital. But when confronted with more pedophiles at Wakefield Prison, he knew he couldn't stay there. Unfortunately, no one was listening to him. And the only thing that had ever gotten him attention was killing... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Abused by his parents from a young age, Robert Maudsley spent his childhood bouncing around orphanages and foster homes before running away in 1969. He spent years living on the streets of London, where he met a man with a dark secret… and decided that man couldn’t live. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In 1959, Eric Cooke committed his first murder in the sleepy city of Perth, Australia. And, having gotten away with the crime, it seemed nothing would slow down his bloody rampage. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Born in 1931 to a caring mother and alcoholic father, Eric Edgar Cooke had a turbulent home life. His string of break-ins and petty thefts were met with sympathetic authorities who gave Cooke second and third chances… But their leniency was cast aside in favor of more violence. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

While Joseph Swango’s patients died at alarming rates, few people seemed capable of connecting the mysterious deaths with the doctor-in-training. The alarm bells only rang once he began poisoning his colleagues… Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

As a teenager in the ‘70s, Joseph Swango had an intense fascination with the macabre, even keeping a scrapbook full of newspaper clippings about murder and car crashes. As he got older, he realized that one career in particular would give him daily contact with death: medicine. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In the late ‘80s, Aileen trolled the highways outside of Daytona, Florida looking for johns. But these days, she was interested in more than sex work. Her johns had always treated her as disposable. Now, armed with a .22 caliber handgun, she was ready to return the favor. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

More abused than loved, Aileen Wuornos suffered through her childhood in 1960s Michigan. She became a sex worker and petty thief, eventually hitchhiking to Florida—where the work that made her an outcast led to the murder that made her infamous. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

For decades, it seemed like Charlie Brandt's first murder was a shocking, unexplainable anomoly—something he would never repeat. But in 2004, another violent crime would make headlines, and unearth secrets no one ever saw coming. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In January 1971, 13-year-old Charlie Brandt retrieved his father's gun and committed a shocking murder, saying it was like he “was sort of programmed to do it.” After 17 months in a mental health facility, he was free, and everything returned to normal… Or so it seemed. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

By the early 1980s, Watts had stabbed three women to death. As police closed in on him, setting up tails and even bringing him in for questioning—but unable to detain him—he fled to Texas, where he disappeared into the city then known as “The Murder Capital of the U.S.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Unable to contain his dark fantasies and suppressed rage, Coral Eugene Watts targeted women in Michigan and Texas starting in 1974, and continuing for nearly a decade. His crime sprees were a reign of terror that for him, brought a perverse kind of relief. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Still desperate to ignite a race war in the United States, Joseph Paul Franklin sought more prominent targets, hoping to draw attention to his cause. But he also found satisfaction in impulsive, isolated murders. When it seemed no one would ever catch him, he got careless. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

He studied Mein Kampf. Changed his name. And joined white supremacist groups across the country. Fueled by hateful rhetoric and armed with guerilla warfare tactics, Joseph Paul Franklin set out to ignite a nationwide race war—right in the midst of the Civil Rights movement. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In 1977, Cottingham was married with three kids, two secret girlfriends, and an itch for abusing sex workers. As the years wore on, he developed increasingly bizarre torture rituals, and his crimes escalated in both body count and brutality. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

He had an idyllic childhood in the 1940s and ‘50s, but as Richard Francis Cottingham grew, he began having dark, dehumanizing sexual fantasies about women. When he started working in New York City, he took those violent, twisted dreams and made them a reality. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In 1979, Lawrence Bittaker and Roy Norris sexually assaulted and murdered five teenage girls. For months, authorities were at a loss to explain the disappearances of their victims, but eventually, Norris and Bittaker got reckless, and the crimes of the Toolbox Killers were revealed to the world. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

They each lived lonely lives, bouncing from jail to jail until a chance meeting in California brought them together in 1978. Bittaker and Norris began a sadistic friendship which evolved into a twisted partnership—one that would eventually claim the lives of five teenage girls. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

At a young age, Moses Sithole was abandoned by his mother, forcing him to go in and out of a traumatic foster care system. As an adult in the ‘90s, he began enacting his revenge on women in a rampage that had South Africa terrified. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In the early ‘70s, a teenaged Dugan had an encounter with one of the most notorious serial killers in the U.S.—a killer whose infamy Dugan would soon match, with a murder spree throughout Chicago’s rural suburbs. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In his youth, Walter Ellis was prone to fits of physical violence. But as he grew older, he took on the role of a gentle and unsuspecting neighbor. Over the course of 20 years, it was this persona that allowed the man known as the Milwaukee North Side Strangler to avoid the detection of local police, who were facing a series of eerily similar murders. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Growing up in the California town of Solvang, Thor Nis Christiansen was the quiet son of Danish immigrants. As he grew older, Thor began harboring dark, disturbing fantasies about women. Before his 20th birthday, he would strike for the first time—and it wouldn't be the last... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

He endured extreme childhood abuse, served in the Marines, and was eventually diagnosed with schizophrenia. Between 1986 and 1996, Andrew Urdiales turned his anger into murder, taking the lives of eight women. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

He spent his life trying to escape jails, mental hospitals, and his urge to kill. From 1961 to 1982, Charles Ray Hatcher murdered at least four people, but he claims to have killed as many as 16 in Missouri, California, and Illinois. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Sent to a reform school for the remainder of his childhood, Jesse Pomeroy, and his distraught mother, had one shared goal in mind: early release. After only 17 months away, they'd got their wish. And by 1874, Jesse was free to continue his attacks—and this time, he was ready to kill. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Born in 1859 with a cleft palate, Jesse Pomeroy's father looked upon his son as weak, and brutally abused him throughout his childhood. Tormented at home and at school, Jesse began to entertain violent fantasies about torturing prisoners. By the time he was 12, simply fantasizing wasn't enough—and the “Boy Torturer of Boston” emerged... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

He claimed to be Sweden's first serial killer. Throughout the 1990s, Sture Bergwall made shocking confessions to dozens of brutal murders across Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Finland. But his final confession was the most surprising of them all. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Growing up as one of the few black kids in Warwick, Rhode Island was not easy. By the time Craig Price transitioned from child to teen, the years of racism and bullying had already made a huge impact on his developing psyche. By the time he was 13-years-old in 1986, his anger had reached a boiling point. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In 1942, Marcel Petiot's fake escape network, Fly-Tox, was operating at full steam. He took his victim's payment, and instead of helping them start new lives in South America, he murdered them and stored the bodies in his basement. But his scheme couldn't escape the attention of the Nazis for long. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Since childhood, Marcel Petiot flaunted a disregard for the rules. As a doctor, he used his charm and influence to enrich his family and get away with his first murder. But when WWII reached Paris, a deadly new scheme began to brew... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

His first murder in 1944 had gone exactly as planned: the body had dissolved in acid, and he was sure no one would ever find out what he had done. So, with that in mind, John George Haigh set about repeating the process again, and again—always chasing the next big score. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Born in the United Kingdom at the beginning of the 20th century, John George Haigh rebelled against his hyper-religious upbringing and opted for a life of crime. He didn't see the point in earning an honest living when he could con others out of theirs. But Haigh soon realized that he needed a way to swindle people and make sure they stayed silent. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

As his living conditions deteriorated in the late 2000's, so did Anthony Sowell’s state of mind. Investigators were horrified when they finally searched his Cleveland home and found the corpses of his victims decaying in nearly every room. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Plagued by addiction, Anthony Sowell killed 11 women between May 2007 and September of 2009. As his abuse became worse, so did his living conditions. Eventually Sowell was almost a total recluse, kept company only by the rotting bodies he kept in his home. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

By 1984, after a lifetime spent breaking the law and facing few consequences, John Edward Robinson had finally crossed the line into cold-blooded murder. Having gotten away with it before, he decided that nothing was stopping him from doing it again, and again... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

As a child growing up in Illinois in the 1940s and ‘50s, John Edward Robinson was obsessed with figures from the criminal underworld. When he was grown and married, he began conning his way into jobs he wasn't qualified for. It wasn't long before his scheming ways took a decidedly dark turn... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In the late 1960s, Donald Henry Gaskins found himself consumed by a ravenous rage. He began stalking the highways of South Carolina, searching for victims. Eventually, he became so violent that even a maximum security prison couldn't stop him from killing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Between 1953 and 1982, Donald Henry “Pee Wee” Gaskins murdered at least 14 people, and claimed to have killed over 100. Gaskins began his crime spree early, and went from a young burglar and car thief in South Carolina to one of the most brutal serial murderers in U.S. history. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In 1989, Danny Rolling had already gotten away with a shocking triple murder. As he tried to stay ahead of the Shreveport cops, he made his way to Gainesville, where he set about terrorizing the University of Florida Campus as the “Gainesville Ripper.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It's likely that an abusive, loveless upbringing in the 1960s and ‘70s shaped Danny Rolling’s troubling violent sexual fantasies. After a young life of petty crime in Louisiana and Georgia, one incident set Danny off. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We are thrilled to bring you a brand new episode of Serial Killers today and for the foreseeable future. We thank you for your patience during this unprecedented time. For more than a decade, Randy Steven Kraft preyed upon vulnerable young Californian men—torturing, dismembering, and murdering dozens. His killings were made all the worse by the blasé approach authorities took to his case. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices