The Serial Killer Podcast

After a brief encounter, she followed him to a grimy rented room where they had sex. What transpired next is a chilling portrait of violence. When Rifkin was nearing climax, he clasped his hands around the poor woman’s throat and squeezed the life out of her as he ejaculated inside her. To him, it was the ultimate power trip, his fantasy of total domination come to life. When he rolled off her cor...

In March 1989, Rifkin made a life-altering decision to kill, targeting a young woman named Susie from Manhattan’s East Village. This episode unravels the events that led to this horrifying crime. Rifkin, fueled by disappointment and rage, brutally attacked Susie with a heavy artillery shell before finally ending her life. Despite her fierce will to survive, Susie's struggle was ultimately in vain....

The stench hit them first in the cluttered garage. A wheelbarrow overflowed with a crimson tide – human blood, thick and viscous. A pair of women’s panties lay discarded on the floor, a grotesque echo amongst the coils of rope and the rolled-up tarps. A chainsaw, its metallic teeth glinting in the harsh light, stood upright against the wall, stained a rusty red with the remnants of its grisly work...

In this gripping episode of The Serial Killer Podcast we dive into the chilling tale of Gerard John Schaefer, a former police officer turned serial killer. The episode uncovers the gruesome details of Schaefer's crimes, his trial, and his eventual demise. It also explores the shocking revelations from Schaefer's own writings, which some believe to be confessions. This episode is a must-listen for...

The torture the girls were subjected to have been difficult to ascertain. The details probably fit with Schafer’s own writings, detailed in previous episodes in this series. One can only hope that Georgia lost consciousness, due to fear or intoxication, and that Susan, perhaps, had an epileptic episode and that in either case they would not have known what atrocities would befall them. But it is m...

The 27th of September, 1972. A date etched in blood on the Florida calendar. Georgia Jessup, a wisp of a girl with dreams far exceeding her sixteen years, vanished from her home. No struggle, no screams, just a blue suitcase packed with aspirations – her own clothes, a few pilfered treasures from her mother's closet, and a younger sister's forgotten dress, a silent plea for a piece of childhood am...

He took pleasure in the kill, not the bounty it provided. Songbirds, their sweet melodies silenced with a single, brutal crack. Land crabs, scuttled across the sand only to meet a leaden demise. These were the trophies John craved, not sustenance, but the chilling dominion over life and death. The boy who once played by the canal now held the power to extinguish the spark of life in living creatur...

Fair warning, the content is graphic and disturbing. I quote: “She was expecting dinner but instead was driven down a deserted road. She was asked to get out of the car and submitted to a frisk search. Then the handcuffs were locked around her wrists and the blindfold placed over her eyes. She was then led away into the dark to the place of execution. She was assisted in mounting the laddar and sa...

She worked the gag from her mouth and began to chew on the knot. The rope left little coarse hairs in her mouth which ground into her gums as she chewed, and it tasted like car oil. Her legs were also tightly bound with rope around her knees. She tried desperately to work her legs free but to no avail. The attempt seemed only to cut the blood flow to her feet, making them numb and, consequently, m...

In the subterfuge of this turbulent environment, a prolific monster operated right under the noses of law enforcement, preying on victims from the city’s most vulnerable population demographic.   On the 2nd of February, 2009, Christine Ross was walking her dog Rucca through the morning shadows of Paradise, her West Mesa subdivision community, when the hound caught a scent. Within a minute, he...

Only two souls managed to escape the deadly clutches of the Briley brothers, this time Linwood and Anthony, to tell their tale: William and Virginia Bucher. Now, both have passed on, their stories echoing in the grave. Unless the shadows of the past decide to part and reveal hitherto unknown survivors or witnesses, the blood-curdling events that transpired on the night of the 12th of March, 1979,...

Imagine if you will, dear listener, an anonymous-looking apartment house on Barton Avenue, Richmond, state of Virginia. It hadn't been opened for three baking-hot days. Opening the door, the seasoned investigators were blasted with a wave of heat and rot. The smell was like a wall, or more apt; a tsunami of death hitting them square in the face as they entered. They had experienced this before, fo...

Lavrenti Pavlovich Beria was a Georgian, like Stalin, who called him ‘my Himmler’. Involved in revolutionary activities from his teens and head of the secret police in Georgia in his twenties, he supervised the ruthless 1930s purges in the region and arrived in Moscow in 1938 as deputy to Nikolai Yezhov, aka ‘the blood-thirsty dwarf’, head of the Soviet secret police. He soon succeeded Yezhov, who...

Brandishing a menacing knife, he binds the child securely with rope he brought with him. After the child is tied up, he cuts away the boy´s clothes so that he lies completely naked under the sun. Smiling, the serial killer’s mask falls away and he quickly masturbates over the now crying boy. According to Garavito, he made a quote/unquote "pact with the devil" and Satanic rituals were also incorpor...

A darker facet of his childhood, less publicly disclosed but equally crucial in understanding this individual, was the sexual abuse he reportedly endured. The precise details of the abuse that Garavito endured are, understandably, scant and thinly documented. What is recognized, however, is that the sexual violence perpetrated against him was reportedly recurrent, beginning from an eerily young ag...

Buono returned to his office and told Cindy Hudspeth that it was time to close up his shop now but that he could give her some job openings if she would come into the house. She was grateful for his help. Once she sat down in the brown vinyl easy chair, her hours were numbered. Bianchi kept her occupied with small talk while Buono fetched the gag, tape, and cord. When she said that she lived in an...

Small bruises showed around her breasts. And then, examining her more closely, Grogan noticed something that made him think at first that he was looking at the body of a drug addict: puncture marks on the inner arms. But there were only two puncture marks, none of the usual scars and needle tracks of the addict. The rectal bleeding and the absence on the body of any obvious signs of a dissipated,...

He tried pulling back on her throat with his forearm first, then used a rag Buono handed him. Even though handcuffed, she managed to kick Buono in the head, so he held down her legs, draped over the back of the front seat, with his free hand until Bianchi had finished the job. When she was limp, Bianchi surreptitiously removed a large turquoise ring from her left hand and slipped it into his pocke...

One afternoon Buono and his pals cruised by as school was letting out and noticed a boy standing alone with his books, waiting for a ride. The boy was wearing a maroon satin jacket with the name “Aristocrats” spelled out across its back. Buono ordered the car to stop and told his buddies that he wanted that jacket. He got out of the car while his three buddies waited. Then he walked up to the soli...

Naked, she tried to beg, pleading with both cousins for her to be let go. Buono was put off by her unshaven legs and derided her as quote/unquote “some kind of a health nut.” He decided to pass up the sex this time, not even bothering to flip a coin, growing sullen and resentful at this affront to his intentions. Watching Bianchi trying to work up some enthusiasm for rape in the spare bedroom, Buo...

Quietly and quickly they picked up the girl, Buono carrying her under the arms, Bianchi under the knees. Buono stepped first over the curb, and as Bianchi followed, his foot caught under the ice plant. He stumbled, almost fell, got his foot loose, and they dropped the body parallel to the curb, heaving her slightly, as one would throwing someone into a swimming pool.   Neither the press nor t...

The two men was confident that they enjoyed complete privacy, there were no risk of prying eyes and since the house was located where it was; no outsiders could hear anyone scream. Buono got out and walked over to the laundry-room door at the side of the house, unlocking it. Sparky the dog was waiting on the steps but knew not to enter the house. When the girl asked what kind of place they had bro...

As with so many serial killer cases certain things are mysterious. It is clear that Bianchi and Buono are serial killer superstars, almost in the same league as Bundy and Dahmer. But their crimes were not particularly nefarious by serial killer standards. Nor did they rack up the greatest body count. But still, there is a certain je ne sais quoi about the case which makes it stand out. Perhaps it...

Towards the end of the summer of 1987, newly released, Thierry Paulin reconnected with his old acquaintances and resumed his night owl life. Still determined to organize parties, he began to update his address book. He began frequenting the nightclubs and gay bars of the Les Halles district again, appearing here and there, more exuberant than ever. Paulin often frequented “Le Palace”, a famous nig...

She had been beaten to death after being gagged and bound with electric wire. The death dated back to Saturday, but was only discovered two days later, thanks to children who came to take a private lesson with the old lady. The apartment was ransacked. The killer or killers had shown incredible savagery: the poor woman had her nose and jaw fractured, and a scarf was half strangling her. The autops...