Serial killers are often some of the most unsuspecting people. Would the wife of a reverend kill her entire family? Would a Taco Bell manager slaughter his employees? Yes and yes.
What may seem even more shocking about these suspects is that they’re Black.
If you leave it to the media and the abundance of Netflix crime documentaries, you’d think the only serial killers to exist had white skin. Nah, fam. We have our own Jeffrey Dahmer, Jack The Ripper and more in our community. Though seemingly rare, their crimes are just as heinous and claimed hundreds of innocent lives.
Can’t think of any Black serial killers off the top of your head? Check out these 15.
1. Keith Gibson
The 41-year-old was already on probation for manslaughter ahead of his killing spree, per WHYY News. Delaware police said in 2021, he began with killing Leslie Ruiz-Basilio during a robbery at a Metro by T-Mobile store in Elsmere, Del. A month after the killing, he murdered Ronald Wright during a street robbery. The police caught him days later, sticking up a Rite-Aid. However, Gibson’s name popped up in Pennsylvania police systems connecting him to a slew of crimes that occurred in Philadelphia around the time the two victims were killed. He was sentenced to seven life terms, per NBC Philadelphia.
2. Anthony Robinson
The 37-year-old targeted a woman in Mechanicsburg, Pa. named Monica White in 2020. She told PEOPLE they dated for a few weeks until she cut him off after he displayed a series of concerning behavioral patterns. After their breakup, he was blasted in the news after being connected to the alleged murders of six women across the DMV. Police said each of the victims connected with Robinson through a dating app, were killed and then dumped with a shopping cart. He was charged with first-degree murder in two of the murders in 2022, per WTOP News.
3. Collins Jumaisi Khalusha
Who Kenyan National Police considered a “psychopathic serial killer” was arrested after being connected to a series of killings dating back to 2022. They became aware of the killings after discovering a series of remains of women ages 18 through 30 just last week. Police said they were found mutilated, stuffed in sacks and discarded near a dump in Kware. One victim’s phone helped police track down Khalusha at a club where he was arrested. Police say he confessed to luring in the victims, killing them and disposing of their bodies – all 42 of them including his wife who he confessed to making his first kill.
4. Eric Adams
Police said connected Adams to the fatal shooting of five women and the critical injury of a teen girl. In a release, police said a woman in her 40s and another woman in her 50s were found shot to death at an apartment. Amidst the investigation, the police department stated officers received word of a 13-year-old girl who had been transferred to the hospital in critical condition from gunshot wounds. The cops then scoured the apartment building for anymore shooting victims and found the remains of two women and a man – all of whom had been shot to death. However, by the time officers tracked him down in North Vegas, Adams fatally shot himself with his weapon.
5. Roberta Elder
The wife of Reverend William M. Elder was not only responsible for his death but also the death of two of his children whom she poisoned with her cooking. She was charged for their murders but during her trial, it was found that her killings didn’t stop at her household. She was accused of killing up to 13 people including two ex-husbands, three of her own children, a grandson, a cousin and her own mother. She was sentenced to life in prison.
6. Henry Louis Wallace
Wallace, also known as the “Taco Bell Strangler,” raped and murdered 11 Black women in the span of four years in the 90s. Most of the victims were women he knew such as friends and co-workers at the Taco Bell he managed in Charlotte, NC. Ol boy even attended some of their funerals. It wasn’t until Wallace killed two women back-to-back in the same building that the police were onto him. He was arrested in 1994 and sentenced to death.
7. Zebra Killers
In the 70s, a group of young Black men embarked on a killing spree, taking the lives of up to 15 people. Their crimes led to a stop-and-search program to be issued in San Francisco which was widely criticized by Black civil rights leaders as another ploy to harass innocent Black people. However, by 1974, seven Black men were arrested. Three of them got off on bail but the remaining four were convicted on a slew of charges including murder and kidnapping, and sentenced to life in prison.
8. Harrison Graham
One summer in 1987, Graham’s neighbor complained to their landlord about a stench coming from Harrison’s apartment. He was ordered to vacate the premises but refused and boarded up his doors and windows. He then fled from the fire escape and the landlord called the police to break into the apartment. What they found were two dead Black women, blood splatters and a slew of skeletal remains. Bones and body parts of other victims were found in bags.
9. Samuel Little
Little is known as the most prolific serial killer not just because of his crimes but because he confessed to a large number of unsolved murders just two years before he died. Little had been killing since the 50s but was sentenced for good in 2014 for killing three women in the 80s. His DNA was then connected to another string of strangulations. In an interview with a Texas Ranger, he confessed to unsolved killings in over a dozen states bringing the total up to 93 people dead.
10. Debra Brown
Brown and Alton Coleman began their killing spree when they lured two young girls into the woods in 1984. One of the girls was raped and the other was suffocated and stomped. For the next 50 days, the two killed eight more people, raped seven and kidnapped three. The couple was sentenced to death and Coleman was executed in 2002. However, Brown’s death sentence was overturned after the attorney general attributed her actions to a mental disability, per Indy Star.
11. Maury Travis
The infamous “Videotape Killer” was linked to the murders of 12 sex workers in St. Louis by investigators, per Fox 2 Now. He would lure women to his home with money or drugs, then tie them up and kill them. After committing each murder, Travis would discard the bodies along the road and carried on this heinous act for three years.
12. Craig Price
Price grew up in a predominantly white neighborhood during the heat of the civil rights movement. Despite having a relatively happy childhood, Craig started experiencing dark thoughts about murder and by the time he turned 13, he had a hefty criminal record including robbery, stalking and assault. Soon, he killed a white woman from his neighborhood. The case went cold until police found he later killed another white woman and her two daughters. He willingly confessed to the murders and was convicted as a minor. His sentence was supposed to have ended in 2017 but his repeated crimes inside prison extended his stay, per WJAR. He goes down in US history as once of the youngest serial killers.
13. Anthony Sowell
Sowell served 15 years in prison in a rape and was released in the early 2000s. However, in 2009, investigators who suspected him of another rape found the decomposing bodies of two women on the third floor of his house and a grave dug in the basement. Sowell had a total of 10 dead bodies rotting in his home, all of which were vulnerable young women who struggled with drug addiction. Victims who escaped tried to tell the police but some didn’t believe their reports.
Sowell was sentenced to death in 2011 but died in 2021 of an unspecified illness, per Cleveland.com.
14. Wayne Williams
In 1981, Williams was arrested for the murders of two adult men. However, during his trial, prosecutors suggested he was also behind a string of 22 murders of children in Atlanta. Though he maintained his innocence, forensic evidence from his home and vehicle connected him to several victims. He was sentenced to life in prison, though many people still believe he is innocent.
15. Carl Eugene Watts
Dubbed by the press as the “Sunday Morning Slasher,” Watts was assumed to be experiencing delusion after being diagnosed with Meningitis. When he was younger, he used to hunt rabbits and stalk his female classmates, then he committed his first murder at 15 years old. According to AP, he killed for a span of eight years claiming the lives of 14 to 100 women. He was hard to catch because police couldn’t find a pattern in how he killed. Then, in 1981, one of his victims faked being unconscious and escaped from him, alerting the police. In Texas, he was charged as a non-violent felon after pleading guilty to burglary with intention to kill. However, a witness from Michigan came forward with a testimony sending him to life in prison.
