Ted Bundy once said, "Sometimes I feel like a vampire." He looked like a human, he talked like a human, but under that skin was a monster. Serial killers lack whatever it is that make the rest of us human, and the 10 real-life horror villains on this list are no exception.
10. The Suicide Website Murderer
While the internet provides us with easy access to information and many hours of cat videos, it definitely has a dark side. For example, depressed Japanese citizens afraid to die alone use the web to form suicide pacts. After finding partners online, they meet up and kill themselves. It's a disturbing trend, and these troubled people are perfect targets for monsters like Hiroshi Maeue.
Maeue suffered from paraphillic psychosexual disorder, meaning he could only get off by hurting people. This pervert's preferred method of sexual gratification was asphyxiating others. Between 1988 and 2005, Maeue tried to strangle five people, but only received light sentences for two of the attacks. Those first few attempts were only practice though. When the internet suicide pacts grew in popularity, Maeue started hunting online.
His first victim was 25-year-old Michiko Nagamoto. Maeue sent her multiple emails encouraging her to commit suicide with him. He even suggested they sit in his car and breathe in fumes from burning charcoal. The young woman agreed, but when she met Maeue, he tied her up and held her mouth and nose shut until she died. When asked later why he did it, Maeue responded, "I wanted to watch a face in agony."
Next, Maeue went after a 14-year-old boy and a college student. Each time, he promised his victim they'd die peacefully together. When they showed up, they were bound and murdered. Afterwards, Maeue hid the bodies in the mountains or near a dam, before returning home to watch recordings of the killings. Fortunately, Maeue was stopped before he could claim more victims, and was executed by hanging in 2009. Strangely, Maeue never appealed his sentence. Perhaps, like his victims, he was ready to end it all.
9. The Sunday Morning Slasher
Houston, Texas was a bad place to be in 1981. The Lone Star State's biggest city had the dubious distinction of leading the nation in homicides—over 700 of them. When Carl Eugene Watts moved into town, things got a lot worse.
Before he started his Houston spree, Watts had been busy in Michigan. He was the prime suspect in the 1980 murders of three Ann Arbor women, but authorities didn't have enough evidence to convict the "Sunday Morning Slasher." When Watts moved to Houston, they could only warn police that trouble was heading their way.
When Watts hit Texas, he moved at an amazing speed, his methods changing from killing to killing. Some women were stabbed, some strangled, and one was even hanged, all because they had "evil in their eyes." Convinced they were wicked, Watts often stole trophies from his victims and burned them to banish their spirits. He took 12 lives before May 23, 1982, when he tried to drown Melinda Aguilar and her roommate in their bathtub. Aguilar escaped from the apartment and called for help. Watts was captured as he tried to flee.
Despite his crimes, the Houston D.A. made a deal with Watts. The Slasher confessed to 12 more murders in exchange for a 60-year sentence. Then, thanks to a technicality, he was given time off for good behavior. Three days were struck off his sentence for every day he spent behind bars—which meant he'd be free in 24 years. Determined to keep this madman locked up, Michigan stepped in to save the day. In November 2004, they found a witness linking Watts to the murder of Helen Dutcher. The Sunday Morning Slasher was sentenced to life in a Michigan prison and died of prostate cancer in 2007.
8. The Murderous Reporter
Crime reporters like Paul Avery and Dominick Dunne have nothing on Vlado Taneski. The Macedonian writer took investigative journalism to a whole new level when he covered a serial killer's exploits in the town of Kicevo. In the mid-2000s, Taneski wrote about three women who'd been violently raped and murdered. The women, ranging in age from 56 to 65, were all cleaners who resembled each other. Each one had been strangled with a telephone cord, stuffed into plastic bags and tossed outside town. Despite Taneski's quiet manner and meek personality, his columns kept readers enthralled with his incredible attention to all the grisly details.
