Kiyoshi Okubo

Enraged man preys on innocent high-school and college female student

Kiyoshi Ōkubo (大久保 清), also referred to in the media as "Wantanabe Kyoshi," was a serial killer from Japan who raped more than a dozen Japanese women and slaughtered eight from late March, 1971 until mid-May of the same year. An outcast, hungry for power and enraged by authority, found "vengeance" in preying on young women ages 16-21. He was noted for approaching and often harassing nearly 150 different women in just 3 months, victimizing those who were persuaded by his charm or simply out of helps reach.

Growing Up

Kiyoshi struggled to fit in as a child. His mother loved him very dearly, and was unwilling to enforce any discipline. His personality was a target for bullies throughout his childhood and as a teen, which caused him to spend most of his time alone. He did not participate in extracurricular activities and didn’t apply himself to school. He often chose to go by a pen name, Tanigawa Ivan (谷川伊凡).

It was noted that Kiyoshi was “unusually mature” for his age by his teachers. He was scolded often for arguing back with elders and making rude remarks to his female classmates. When he was just 11, he was caught molesting his 7-year-old female neighbor. His family, lacking the discipline they needed to show, joking called him “little Kodaira” (Kodaira was a former rape-murdering Japanese serial killer).

Thirst for Power

Being bullied and alone, Okubo felt like his life wasn’t in his control. His lack of confidence, demented mind, and power lust caused him to want to rape women. On December 26, 1955, he decided it was finally time. Okubo, being undoubtedly nervous and completely unprepared, attempted (and failed) to rape an unsuspecting woman. He was arrested, convicted and incarcerated for almost a year. He was paroled in December, 1959.

Four months later in the April of 1960, he again attempted (and failed) to rape another woman. Strangely, however, his victim withdrew her charges against him.

For the time being, Okubo’s failed rape attempts were enough to keep him honest. On May 5, 1961, he married a woman and had a son and a daughter.

His marriage was not a commitment to him, as his hunger for dominance grew. On December 23, 1966, two days before Christmas, he raped a young girl. His success only made his urges grow and two months later, he raped another woman. Four months later, he was again apprehended and sent to prison for 4 years. He was released in 1971.

Rape Wasn't Enough

Soon after his released from prison, Okubo decided that rape just wasn’t enough to subside his evil urges and rage against the authorities. He was quoted as saying “"I became the brute that I am because of the police. During their investigation of the previous two cases in which I was involved, they treated me very badly. Their punishment was dealt out in a way that completely destroyed my humanity. It made me rebel against authority." He began to lure women, rape them, and then murder them.

Okubo leading police to hidden bodies

• His first victim was on March 31 when he murdered 17-year-old Miyako Tsuda. 
• His second victim, 17-year-old Mieko Oikawa, was killed 6 days later. 
• 11 days later, on April 17th, he murdered Chieko,19. 
• One day after that, he murdered Seiko Kawabata, 17 
• April 17th, he murdered Akemi Sato, just 16 years old (youngest victim) 
• April 27th, he killed, Kazuyo Kawaho, 18 
• On May 3, Reiko Takemura was murdered, 21 
• May 10th, Naoko Takanohashi, 21-years-old was killed. Takanohashi’s concerned brother began to trace her disappearance and led police to Okubo 4 days later. Their would be no more release dates. 

Okubo’s terror ended fast due to his own negligence. He often did not care to clean up evidence or switch vehicles after some women managed to get away. Okubo showed no particular method when disposing the bodies of the women he had slain. Four were were buried in a vacant lot near Takasaki City, the others were throw in rural dump sites. His Mazda was continually seen around the Takasaki neighborhood, which told police that it was most likely him. When he was caught, he was in his Mazda with a young women. Calmly, Okubo reached into his pocket, pulled out some money and gave it to the women and said “You’d better take a taxi home.” 

At first he was only held on charges of abduction with intent to commit an immoral act, but Okubo soon confessed his crimes and led police to the graves of several victims they had not yet discovered.

Death 

The court found Okubo guilty and sentenced to death by hanging on February 22, 1973. He spent the next three years working to appeal his trial, all attempts failed. When asked if he had any comments before death, he stated:

“If I could be reborn I would like to come back as a weed. I was told by a women once I once knew that no matter how much weeds are tread upon, they snap back. That’s the kind of existence I would like to have in the next life.”

When his date for death had finally arrived, Okubo knew that this was it. Filled with emotions of hate, shame, and hopefully remorse, it was noted that he couldn’t stand without assistance. He was hanged 1976, soon after becoming 41.

In the Media Today 

On August 29, 1983, Okubo's crime became a TV drama, The Crime of Kiyoshi Ōkubo (大久保清の犯罪).

Charles Quansah

Charles Papa Kwabena Ebo Quansah (born 1964) is a convicted Ghanaian serial killer who was arrested in February 2000 for the murder of his girlfriend Joyce Boateng.

While in custody, Quansah was subsequently charged with the murder of another woman, Akua Serwaa who was found strangled near Kumasi Sports Stadium, in Kumasi on January 19, 1996 and subsequently confessed to the strangulation deaths of nine women in the capital city of Accra. The deaths of thirty-four women were attributed to a serial killer beginning in 1993.

Quansah, a mechanic who lived in the Accra, Ghana neighborhood of Adenta, had been previously under police surveillance as a suspect in the killings.

Police and prison records reveal that Charles Quansah was jailed at the James Fort prisons for the offence of rape in 1986. After completing his sentence, he committed another rape and was jailed for three years at the Nsawam Prisons in 1987. Quansah was imprisoned again for robbery in 1996 at the Nsawam Medium Prisons in near Accra, Ghana. After his release that year he relocated to Accra.

Charles Quansah's trial for the serial killings began on Thursday, July 11, 2002 at the High Court Criminal Sessions, Accra. He was subsequently convicted of the strangulation deaths of nine women and sentenced to be hanged until death.

In 2003, Charles Quansah spoke to the press and denied killing any of the nine women he was convicted of murdering or the further twenty-three women he was suspected of murdering and issued a statement proclaiming that he was tortured whilst in police custody.

Antonis Daglis

Antonis Daglis (Greek: Αντώνης Δαγλής, born 1974 - 2 August 1997) is a Greek serial killer who was convicted of the murders of three women and attempted murder of six others in Athens on January 23, 1997. Referred to as the "Athens Ripper", he was sentenced to thirteen terms of life imprisonment, plus 25 years.

Daglis, a truck driver preyed upon Athens prostitutes between 1992 and 1995. He had been a repeat juvenile offender since the age of 14. He had a prior record for a 1988 charge of seducing a minor, and in 1989 he was arrested for attacking a group of men at the Zappeion in Athens with a knife.

Daglis was initially suspected for two murders after he was arrested for the rape and abduction of an English woman named Ann Hamson. After his arrest, Daglis confessed to the rape, strangulation and dismemberment of two women and the attempted murder of a further six, and having robbed all eight women. He later admitted to dismembering the bodies of two women, Eleni Panagiotopoulou, 29, and Athina Lazarou, 26 with a hacksaw and disposing of them around Athens. Daglis subsequently confessed to the previously unsolved murder of a prostitute whose dismembered body was found in a dumpster in 1992. During his trial, Daglis told the court, "I hated all prostitutes and continue to hate them. I went to meet them for sex but suddenly other pictures came into my head. I heard voices which ordered me to kill. Once I thought about strangling my fiancée, but I restrained myself."

Antonis Daglis committed suicide on 2 August 1997.

Aino Nykopp-Koski

Aino Nykopp-Koski is a Finnish serial killer. She worked as a nurse and was found guilty of killing five patients and the attempted murder of five more. No motive was established for the murders.

Between 2004 and 2009 Nykopp-Koski worked at a range of hospitals, care homes and patients' homes. There she killed five elderly patients using sedatives and opiates. She was apprehended in March 2009.

Nykopp-Koski was tried in Helsinki District Court in December 2010 and pleaded not-guilty, though the court convicted her. She was sentenced to life in prison (minimum of 12 years before likely pardon). Despite having a personality disorder she was deemed culpable for her actions.

Her lawyer has said an appeal against the conviction will be lodged.

Matti Haapoja

Matti Haapoja (September 16, 1845, Isokyrö – January 8, 1895, Turku) was a Finnish murderer, much covered by the press at the time of the murders.Matti Haapoja was convicted murderer of three people, admitted to the murders of 18; possibly killed 22–25; sentenced to life imprisonment, hanged himself in a prison cell.

The exact number of his victims is unknown. He was convicted of two murders and was scheduled for a trial for his third murder trial when he committed suicide in his cell. He can be linked to seven other identified murder cases, but most of those happened during his exile in Siberia and are poorly documented, so his involvement is not certain. It is claimed that he confessed to 18 murders, but there are no details about this supposed confession, and the figure should be regarded as unreliable. Some sources estimate his total number of murders as 22-25. He also non-fatally wounded at least six men in knife fights.

Haapoja started his criminal career as a brawler, graduating quickly to stealing horses. His first known murder happened on December 6, 1867, when he stabbed his drinking partner Heikki Impponen in a drunken brawl. He was sentenced to serve 12 years in prison at Turku for his murder. During the next 10 years he escaped from prison four times, spending months at large on each occasion. Around this time he gained great notoriety as a jailbreaker and a thief. His fame as a robber started to grow after the newspapers reported that he had robbed and shot at Esa Nyrhinen on August 12, 1876. Later it was found that Nyrhinen had been hiding Haapoja at his home and the men had had an argument.

As a result of his escapes and continued thievery, Haapoja was sentenced to life in prison in 1874. After his last escape, he petitioned for his sentence to be changed to an exile to Siberia. This was accepted and he was sent to Omsk oblast in 1880. During his stay there, he is reputed to have killed a man in 1886, after which he was exiled to East Siberia. Folk stories claim that during this time Haapoja killed two other famous Finnish criminals, Anssin Jukka and Kaappo Sutki, but these tales are likely false as they offer no conclusive proof.

Around 1889 Haapoja decided to escape Siberia and return to Finland. He later claimed that he intended to emigrate to America. He raised money for this escape by committing a series of robberies and murders. He probably killed at least three men and participated in the murder of a fourth. He also obtained a passport that belonged to a Russian man whose fate remains unclear.

Haapoja returned to Finland in September 1890. A month later he murdered and robbed a prostitute, Jemina Salo. He was captured at Porvoo a couple of days later and recognized. At his trial Haapoja behaved arrogantly, confessing to this murder as well as to one of the murders he had committed in Siberia. He hoped that he would be sent back to Siberia but instead the court gave him a second life term in prison.

On October 10, 1894, Haapoja tried to escape from prison yet again. During this attempt he killed a guard and wounded two others. When he realized that he couldn't get out, he attempted to commit suicide by stabbing himself, but the wound was not fatal. However, as soon as he had recovered from the self-inflicted stabbing wound, he hangedhimself in his cell on January 8, 1895. His skeleton was kept in the Museum of Crime in Vantaa for a long time, until he was finally buried in Ylistaro in 1995.

Writer Kaijus Ervasti wrote a book about Matti Haapoja called Murhamiehen muotokuva - Matti Haapoja 1845-1895 ("Portrait of a murderer - Matti Haapoja 1845-1895").

Kaspars Petrovs

Convicted of murdering 13 elderly Riga women in 2005; confessed to killing 38 Kaspars Petrovs (born 1978) is a Latvian national, and a convicted serial killer. He was convicted of the murder of thirteen elderly women by the Riga Regional Court on May 12, 2005 and sentenced to life in prison.

Petrovs, the son of a prominent medical doctor, had been homeless for several years. Initially held in connection with the murders of five women in February 2003, he later confessed to killing more than thirty women. He was initially charged with 38 murders, 8 attempted murders, and a number of theft and robberies, mostly involving elderly female residents of Riga, Latvia between 2000 and 2003. However, authorities only pursued charges in the deaths of 13 of the victims due to a lack of forensic evidence in the other cases. Petrovs, who had a previous conviction for theft in 1998, maintained after his arrest and during his 2005 trial that he had not "intended to kill his victims, but only to rob them."

Petrovs strangled the women after following them home and forcibly entering their apartments or posing as a Latvijas gāze (state gas company) employee. Petrovs stole an estimated 18,000 lats (26,000 euros) in goods and money from his victims. After his conviction, Petrovs apologized to his victims' families in court and asked for their forgiveness. "I cannot return the victims to life by words, but I wish they were still alive, that nothing had happened..."

Lisbon Ripper

The Lisbon Ripper (Portuguese: Estripador de Lisboa) was a serial killer who, between 1992 and 1993 murdered three prostitutes in Lisbon, Portugal. José Pedro Guedes, aged 46, was revealed to be the killer in late 2011, nineteen years after the events, when his son Joel, aged 21, applied for the Secret Story - A Casa dos Segredos 2 reality show (in which contestants are kept locked away for 10 weeks in a house, and each contestant has to conceal a secret while everyone else has to try and discover it) with the secret "I know who the Lisbon Ripper is". This information aroused the Polícia Judiciária's suspicion. Before his arrest, José Guedes confessed details of the murders to the online edition of the Sol newspaper.

As of yet, José Guedes is under arrest, although he cannot be tried for the Lisbon Ripper murders as they had prescribed in 2008. However, he can still be convicted for murders that, allegedly, he had committed in Germany, where he immigrated, and in Aveiro, in 2000.

(Mad Doctor) Lewis Hutchinson

Lewis Hutchinson, a Scottish immigrant to Jamaica, was the first recorded serial killer in Jamaica's history and one of its most prolific. He was convicted of shooting dozens of people in the 18th century; executed in 1773.

Hutchinson, better known as the Mad Master and Mad Doctor of Edinburgh Castle, was born in Scotland in 1733 where he is believed to have studied medicine. In the 1760s, he came to Jamaica to head an estate called Edinburgh Castle. He was said to have legally obtained the house (now a ruin) but to have maintained his group of cattle through the theft of strays from neighbours. This would not be the only accusation made of Hutchinson. Shortly after Hutchinson's arrival in Jamaica, travellers began to disappear and suspicion started to mount. For many miles, Edinburgh Castle was the only populated location on the way from Saint Ann's Bay and, not knowing that they would become the target of Hutchinson's rifle, travelers would rest at the castle, only to succumb to the Mad Doctor's attack.

Hutchinson murdered for pure sport, what may be described as a thrill killing, as passers-by from all races, shapes, sizes, and incomes were fair game. What is true about Hutchinson's killings is debatable. He would shoot lone travelers and was said to feed on the flow of his victims' blood as well as dismember them. He, or according to some sources his slaves, would then toss the remains in a cotton tree or a sinkhole for animals to feast on. That sinkhole became known as Hutchinson's Hole. At the height of his villainy, he would invite guests to his castle to be entertained before killing them. Hutchinson's reputation for debauchery made him notable as many would avoid him out of fear.

His slaves' tales of terrible treatment and the gruesome details of the murders made him legendary. This is why he was allowed to roam free for a time until he shot an English soldier by the name of John Callendar. John Callender attempted to apprehend Hutchison. After Hutchinson shot Callender, he bolted south to Old Harbour and boarded a ship. The Royal Navy, commanded by Admiral Rodney, caught Hutchinson before he could escape. Shortly after being caught, he was tried and found guilty. In 1773 he was hanged in Spanish Town Square. Although the final toll won't be known, upon searching his home after his arrest, approximately 43 watches and a large amount of clothes were found. The records of his trial stand in the National Archives.

Dagmar Johanne Amalie Overbye

Dagmar Johanne Amalie Overbye (April 23, 1887 – May 6, 1929) was a Danish serial killer. She murdered 25 children – of which one was her own – during a seven-year period from 1913 to 1920. On March 3, 1921, she was sentenced to death in one of the most talked about trials in Danish history, that changed legislation on childcare. The sentence was later commuted to life in prison.

Overbye was working as a professional child caretaker, caring for babies born outside of marriage, murdering her own charges. She strangled them, drowned them or burned them to death in her masonry heater. The corpses were either cremated, buried or hidden in the loft. Overbye was convicted of nine murders, as there were no proof of the others. Her lawyer based the case on Overbye being abused herself as a baby, but that did not impress the judge. She became one of the three women sentenced to death in Denmark in the 20th century, but she – like the other two – was reprieved.[citation needed] She died in prison on May 6, 1929, at age 42.

Notes relating to her case are included in the Politihistorisk Museum (Museum of Police History) in Nørrebro, Copenhagen. The Danish author Karen Søndergaard Jensen wrote a fiction novel called Englemagersken (The Angel Maker) based on her. Teatret ved Sorte Hest in Copenhagen has performed a play named Historien om en Mo(r)der (Morder meaning "murderer" and moder meaning "mother") based on her life.

Peter Lundin (Bjarne Skounborg)

Bjarne Skounborg (b. 1971), born Peter Kenneth Bostrøm Lundin, and more commonly known as Peter Lundin, is a Danish convicted murderer. In April 1991, Lundin strangled his mother to death in Maggie Valley, North Carolina and, with the help of his father, he buried her body on a beach at Cape Hatteras, where it was found eight months later. In 1992, Lundin was sentenced to 15 years imprisonment for the murder: his father, Ole Lundin, was sentenced to two years as an accomplice. He was later again convicted for killing a women and 2 children.

Saeed Hanaei

Hanaei targeted female prostitutes in the eastern city of Mashhad. He often targeted drug addicts, because he felt that he was helping rid the city of moral corruption. The killings were referred to as the "spider killings" by the Iranian press because Hanaei lured the women to his home and strangled them and dumped their bodies.
Hanaei killed 16 women before he was apprehended by the police.

He was found guilty and hanged at dawn on April 8, 2002 in Mashhad Prison. The incident was the subject of the 2002 documentary And Along Came a Spider. Shock rocker Alice Cooper's 2008 album, Along Came A Spider, is a concept album, following Hanaei's crimes.

Tehran Desert Vampire (Mohammed Bijeh)

Mohammed Bijeh (February 7, 1975 – March 16, 2005) was an Iranian serial killer. He confessed in court to raping and killing 16 young boys between March and September 2004, and was sentenced to 100 lashes followed by execution. All the boys were between 8 and 15 years old. In addition, he killed two adults.

On March 16, 2005, in Pakdasht, Iran, the town near the desert area where the killings occurred, in front of a crowd of about 5,000, Bijeh's shirt was removed and he was handcuffed to an iron post, where he received his lashings from different judicial officials. He fell to the ground more than once during the punishment, but did not cry out. A relative of one of the victims managed to get past security and stab Bijeh. The mother of one of the victims put a blue nylon rope around his neck, and he was hoisted about 10 meters in the air by a crane until he died.

The Death Angel (Robledo Puch)

Carlos Eduardo Robledo Puch (born January 22, 1952, in Buenos Aires, Argentina), also known as "The Death Angel" and "The Black Angel", is an Argentine serial killer.

He was convicted for 11 murders, one attempted murder, 17 robberies, one rape, one attempted rape, one count of sexual abuse, two kidnappings and two thefts. He killed his victims in a variety of ways, such as stabbing, shooting, strangling, bludgeoning to death with rocks and slitting their throats. He was sentenced to life imprisonment to be served in the high-security jail of Sierra Chica, near the city of Olavarria. In July 2000, he became eligible for parole; however, he didn't submit a petition. On May 27, 2008, Puch asked to be paroled. However, a judge denied his petition considering he is a threat to society.

Big Eared Midget (Cayetano Santos Godino)

16-year-old from Argentina murders 4 innocent children

Cayetano Santos Godino (October 31, 1896 – November 15, 1944), also known as "Petiso Orejudo" ("Big Eared Midget"), was an Argentinian serial killer who terrified Buenos Aires at the age of 16. In the early 20th century, he was responsible for the murder of four children, the attempted murder of another seven children, and the arson of seven buildings.

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