The most notorious serial killer from each state

In October 1976, Thomas Warren Whisenhant abducted Cheryl Lynn Payton from the convenience store where she worked. He drove her to a secluded area and sexually assaulted her in the front seat of his pick-up truck. He then shot her point blank in the head and dragged her body into a wooded area. A few days later, Whisenhant returned to her body and mutilated it.

When he was caught, he told the police everything about Payton's murder and even confessed to other murders: the deaths of Venora Hyatt and Patricia Hitt. He was put to death in 2010.

Alaska has more serial killings per its population size than any other state, according to HuffPost. So although it's hard to choose just one killer that terrorized the state, Robert Hansen seems to leave a really bone-chilling scare.

Hansen appeared to be the model father, husband, and business owner — but he was harboring a terrible secret. He was hunting women like wild animals. In 1971, he started to abduct sex workers and strippers and bring them to his remote cabin in the woods where he would torture them. He'd let them loose in the woods of Anchorage and then he'd hunt them down for mere pleasure.

When finally caught, Hansen confessed to murdering 17 people but was only convicted for four. He died in prison in 2014 at 75.

Mark Goudeau became known as the "Baseline Killer" when he terrorized the Phoenix, Arizona, community in the summer of 2006. He would attack women during their daily lives. One woman he brutally raped and murdered when she was vacuuming her car. Another woman met a similar fate when she was just waiting at a bus stop. They were all found in pools of blood with their pants pulled halfway down.

In total, Goudeau was found guilty of killing nine people, most of them women. In 2016, his nine death sentences were upheld in Phoenix. He is still in prison.

Although this killer was never identified and spanned two states, The Phantom Killer earns his spot on the list for the terror he caused in 1946. Every three weeks to the day this murderer would shoot a couple to death in their car. Eventually, movie theaters canceled shows, people stayed inside behind locked doors, and very few ventured outside. The town of Texarkana — which spanned Texas and Arkansas — lived in fear, as he apparently attacked eight people and killed five.

Just as fast as the killings started, they suddenly stopped. The Phantom Killer was never identified, but the terror he left in the small town was never lost, ultimately inspiring the classic horror film "The Town that Dreaded Sundown."

Ed Kemper is a particularly brutal serial killer who killed 10 young people, earning him the title "The Co-ed Killer." Before earning this moniker, he killed his grandparents at 15 and was in jail for two years.

In the early '70s, Kemper started to pick up young hitchhikers who were Fresno State students. Eventually, he escalated to killing them and cutting their heads off. On some occasions, he would have sex with the corpses.

Right before he was caught, he killed his mother by smashing her head with a hammer and decapitating her.

He was found guilty on eight counts of first-degree murder. He is currently serving his sentence in prison.

Scott Lee Kimball is an FBI informant turned serial killer. In 2002, he was in jail for fraud and convinced the FBI to let him out as an informant. During those years free from jail, he killed four people. Kimball killed his uncle, his cellmate's girlfriend, and a 19-year-old girl. Kimball was the last to see all of them alive.

After a brutal car chase, Kimball was arrested and plead guilty to four charges of second-degree murder. He is currently serving a 70-year sentence.

William Devin Howell can best be described as a drifter. In 2003, he roamed the streets of Connecticut in his van that he dubbed his "murder mobile." The name makes sense because, at that time, Howell abducted, assaulted, and murdered seven people, according to Oxygen. He buried the bodies in his "garden" behind a strip mall as a memorial.

On trial, Howell said he could not explain his motive behind the killings, referencing a "monster" inside him. "I know everyone wants to know why I committed these crimes. I don't have an answer. I do not know myself," he said at the time.

In 2017, he was sentenced to 360 years in prison.

The state of Delaware only has one documented serial killer: Steven Brian Pennell or more commonly known as the "Route 40 Killer." Between the years of 1987 and 1988, Pennell preyed on the sex workers who worked on Route 40. He'd pick them up in his electrician van.

As the bodies began to pile up, investigators struggled to find the culprit. All they had for clues were blue carpet fibers on the bodies, WHYY reports. Eventually, an undercover cop was picked up by Pennell and she noticed his van was covered in blue carpet. The investigators had their guy: a seemingly harmless man who was a father, a husband, and an electrician.

He was found guilty of murdering two of his victims. During his sentencing, Pennel bizarrely asked to be put to death; however, he never admitted to the crimes. He died of lethal injection in 1992.

While Florida has seen the likes of Aileen Wuornos and Ted Bundy, one unknown serial killer makes this list for her brutality. Christine Falling became known as the "Babysitter from Hell" when she choked and killed five children in the early '80s, including an 8-month-old baby. She was just 19 years old when she murdered the children.

She pled guilty and said she killed the children she babysat for because she had to satisfy a sudden urge to choke them, according to The New York Times. She was sentenced to life in prison and is still there to this day.

Between 1979 and 1981, Atlanta was in a state of panic. Black children in the neighborhood were being targeted and murdered one-by-one. It became known as the Atlanta Child Murders.

It is believed that Wayne Williams — a freelance photographer — may have been responsible for the murders. Wayne is in jail for two other murders and has never been tried for the Atlanta Child Murders, but there is evidence that points to him, including the fact that fibers from his home and dog were found on the victims.

Some believe Williams has nothing to do with these crimes and think that police pinned them on him because they wanted an answer. There are those who also believe the KKK were the real murderers of these children, but the FBI found no direct link between the group and these murders.

If true, Williams could be guilty of killing close to 30 people.

When you think of Hawaii, you think of sunny beaches and peaceful islands. In the mid-'80s the tropical utopia was gripped with fear when five bodies were found near water. All five were women ranging in age from 17 to 36, Hawaii News Now reports. Each one of the bodies was found with their hands tied behind their back and some were sexually assaulted.

Police believed the murders were the act of a serial killer, but could never find the culprit. The case remains open.

Lyda Southard makes the list because she's often credited with being Idaho's (and sometimes the country's) first woman serial killer. In the early 1900s, Lady Southard murdered her four former husbands, her brother-in-law, and ever her own daughter by poisoning.

It's believed Southard murdered her husbands for insurance purposes. After she was caught, she was sentenced to 10 years to life in prison. After a notorious escape from prison, she later died from a heart attack.

Her body was completely hairless, a side effect of exposure to arsenic.

Dubbed the "Serial Killer Clown," Gacy killed 33 boys and young men in the '70s. Since he worked as a clown performer for children's parties, he would often kill his victims while wearing the clown costume that he called Pogo the Clown.

Gacy would sexually assault the boys, strangle them with rope, and then bury their bodies under his house. He was found guilty on all 33 counts of murder and was put to death in 1994.

Herbert Baumeister led a double life. He lived on a farm in Indiana with his wife of 25 years and had three children. What his wife didn't know was that Herb also cruised gay bars at night, picking up young men.

Eventually, police started showing up at the Baumeister home asking questions about missing boys. They later found 11 bodies just 50 feet from his home. As the cops circled in on him, he panicked and died by suicide without ever facing trial.

Although Carroll Edward Cole's crimes weren't committed in Iowa, he grew up in the state that seemingly shaped his life into a serial killer. While in Iowa, he lived with his mother who would often beat him. There, he grew to hate his mother and women as a whole.

Between 1948 and 1980, Cole strangled and killed 13 women across multiple states because he said it felt like he was killing his mother, according to the Sioux City Journal.

He was found guilty and sentenced to death. He refused appeal because "it would be unbearable to stay" here any longer. He was executed in 1985.

Dennis Lynn Rader is better known by his other name: the "BTK Killer." The letters stand for "bind, torture, kill" and that is exactly what he did. He killed 10 people in Wichita between 1974 and 1991.

What made him particularly noteworthy is the cat and mouse game he played with authorities. At each crime scene, he would leave a clue as to who he was. At one, he left a letter telling them he can't stop killing and gave himself the initials BTK.

He is currently serving his 10 life sentences in prison.

Donald Harvey is better known as "The Angel of Death" after he confessed to 57 murders. In the 1980s, Harvey was a nurse's aid working at hospitals in Kentucky and Ohio, and he killed dozens of patients using cyanide, rat poison, and arsenic, according to WXIX.

"Bottom line was, Donald Harvey liked to kill," William Whalen, Harvey's former attorney, wrote in a book.

Harvey was convicted of 37 murders and sentenced to multiple life sentences. In 2017, he was beaten to death in prison.

The story of Clementine Barnabet is that of voodoo and the occult. Barnabet killed entire families as they slept in what became known as the "Voodoo Murders" in the 1910s. Nineteen-year-old Barnanbet confessed to killing 17 people with an axe on behalf of the Church of Sacrifice. On her behalf, church followers killed upwards of 40 people. Although she confessed, she was not put to death because she was so young — instead, she was sentenced to life in prison.

John Joubert once said that when he was young he fantasized about killing his babysitter and eating her. In the late '70s, Joubert made his fantasies a reality when he killed three boys, strangling them and taking bites into each. Two of his kills took place in Nebraska when he worked with the Air Force and the third happened in Maine when he abducted an 11-year-old boy who went out for a jog.

When Joubert was caught, he said was happy because he knew he would kill again, according to the New York Daily News. He met his fate in the electric chair on July 17, 1996.

In the '90s, Metheny would lure sex workers to his trailer to stab and strangle them. But, it's what he did with their bodies that really shocked the nation. Turns out, Metheny also owned a food stand where he would mix the human flesh from his victims with animal meat and then sell it to his customers, according to The Sun.

"The human body taste was very similar to pork. If you mix it together no one can tell the difference," he told The Sun in 2015.

That's how he earned his name "The Cannibal." He was found guilty on three murder charges and was facing the death penalty, but in 2000 it was overturned to a life sentence. He died in prison.

Between 1962 and 1964, Boston was plagued with a serial killer. Thirteen women were killed in their own homes. There was no sign of forced entry, so police believe each victim let their murderer in voluntarily. Despite the fact that some of the women were stabbed to death, the killer earned the name the "Boston Strangler." His killing sparked a full panic in the small city.

Albert DeSalvo confessed to all 13 murders, but his story didn't fully add up. He was eventually murdered in prison. The case of the Boston Strangler serial killer is still left unsolved.

He was known as "The Serial Stabber" because between 2009 and 2010, Elias Abuelazam stabbed 18 people in Flint, Michigan. Of those 18, five people were killed.

His stabbings became national news when he crossed state lines to stab even more people. Some believe his stabbings were racially motivated because the majority of his victims were African American.

He was sentenced to life in prison for his crimes and remains in prison.

In 1982, Minnesota police received several phone calls from a man who was crying. He would call after every time he killed a person, confessing to murder. In the years to come, the "Weepy-voiced killer" would be identified as Paul Michael Stephani. Stephani admitted to beating and stabbing three women between the years 1980 and 1982. He confessed to several other murders just before dying in prison, according to the Star Tribune.

In 1995, Glen Rogers met Linda Price at the Mississippi State Fair and they shared a drink. Eventually, they moved in together. The day before Halloween, Price, a redhead, was found dead in the bathtub, and Rogers fled the scene.

Later, Rogers would be connected to two other murders of women with red hair and found slain in their bathtubs. Rogers became known as the "Cross Country Killer" for killing his victims across multiple state lines.

In 2012, reports surfaced that Rogers may be the murderer of Nicole Simpson — not O.J. Simpson, but nothing ever came of it.

He was convicted of two murders and sentenced to death. Rogers is currently on death row.

Terry Blair first killed his pregnant girlfriend and mother of his two children in 1982. Since then, he raped and killed at least seven other women during his time in Kansas City, Missouri, the Daily Mail reports. While on trial for his murders, he was described as "being a cold, calculating killer determined to kill as many women who worked as sex workers."

He was found guilty of eight charges of first-degree murder and was sentenced to life in prison.

Terry is not the only member of the Blair family who has a murderous past. Five other relatives, including his mother, were convicted of murder. This makes the Blair family one of the most murderous families in Missouri.

In 1973, a 7-year-old girl in Michigan was abducted and strangled to death. Her killer cut up her body. That murderer turned out to be David Meirhofer, who confessed to four other murders during a four-hour interrogation. They called him a "mindless monster," according to the Argus-Press.

Meirhofer was one of the first serial killers to be identified using FBI's newly developed profiling system that helped catch countless other serial killers.

He hanged himself in jail just hours after confessing.

Technically, Charles Starkweather is a spree killer but that doesn't make him any less terrifying. In 1958, for two short months, Starkweather shocked the nation with his crimes. At just 19 years old he killed 11 people. He scared everyone because he was killing with reckless abandon at random. There was no pattern or clear idea as to who would be next.

He told authorities he started his killing spree because his parents did not approve of his girlfriend, according to Wyoming History's website.

Starkweather was found guilty of murder and was sentenced to death. He was executed in 1959.

They had a deal. Charlene would kidnap the girls and lure them in with the false promise of safety. Gerald would then keep them as sex slaves, ultimately killing them when he was finished. By 1980, the couple killed 10 teenagers in Nevada and California. They were given the name "Sex Slave Killers."

Once caught, Charlene turned on Gerald in return for a shorter sentence. Gerald was found and was sentenced to death in both California and Nevada, but died of cancer before he was executed. Charlene got out of jail in 2013 after serving a 16-year sentence.

It's hard to pin down Terry Peder Rasmussen. They called him the "Chameleon" because he went by so many names and aliases. In New Hampshire, he was known as "Bob Evans" who killed one woman and three small children. He stuffed their bodies in barrels in the woods.

In California, he was "Gordon Jensen" where he killed two other women who were mothers of his babies.

The body count rose across state lines, as his list of aliases grew. Rasmussen was finally identified, but he had already died in prison, where he was serving time for different charges in 2010.

Charles Edmund Cullen was the "Angel of Death" killer, and he killed upwards of 40 people over his 16-year career as a nurse in New Jersey. When patients would look for him to care during their darkest times and he would respond by killing them, usually with prescription drugs.

In his confession, Cullen said he believed he was doing the community a service, helping these sick patients relieve their pain. During his "60 Minutes" interview, he apologized for his crimes but said, "I don't know if I would have stopped."

Cullen only confessed to the 40 murders, but investigators and experts believe his body count might reach the hundreds.

He was found guilty of murder and sentenced to 11 life sentences.

David Parker Ray bought a $100,000 trailer. Inside the trailer, he made a personal torture chamber, fitted with sex toys, handcuffs, whips, and chains. Ray would bring his victims to this chamber and torture them sexually before murdering them, according to the Albuquerque Journal. Ray would often record the torture on video. He called his truck the toy box, so he took on the name "The Toy Box Killer."

Sometimes he let the women go after torturing them. For others, he cut them into pieces and threw their bodies into lakes and ravines.

He was sentenced to 224 years in prison, but he died in prison of a heart attack in 2002.

In 1993, Rifkin was pulled over by police for not having a license plate. The police were suddenly struck by a smell escaping from the trunk of his car. The smell turned out to be Tiffany Bresciani decomposing body.

It was discovered that over four years, the Long Islander killed 17 women — most of them sex workers. He dismembered their bodies and disposed of the pieces all over New York.

He was found guilty of killing 17 women and was sentenced to 203 years in prison, which he is still serving.

In an interview with the Daily News in 2010, Rifkin said, "I was surprised I didn't get caught sooner."

When 10 women were murdered in the mid-'90s in Charlotte, North Carolina, they all had one thing in common: They all knew Henry Louis Wallace. Each of the women was friends with Wallace's girlfriend or worked with him, and each had his name in their phone books. Wallace even attended some of their funerals.

During his confession, he explained how he strangled each of his victims to death and disposed of their bodies in lakes or near railroad tracks, according to Charlotte Magazine.

He is currently on death row, waiting to fulfill his death sentence.

Eugene Butler was declared mentally insane in 1906 and died in an asylum a few years later. Two years after his death, a small town in North Dakota learned Butler may have been a serial killer.

While excavating his former home, they found the bodies of six boys and young men buried under the floorboards. They were between the ages of 15 and 18. They were killed by a blow to the back of the head.

The motive for the murders was never discovered.

In 2016, police received a 911 call just outside of Columbus, Ohio. The woman calling said she had been kidnapped. When police arrived at the home, the place was filled with garbage to the ceiling. The smell of decay was overwhelming. Police found a strangled woman's body hiding under a pile of clothes. A second victim was decomposing in the basement.

Shawn Grate was taken out of the home in handcuffs and later confessed to killing five women. Grate was found guilty and was sentenced to death in 2018.

Despite killing 11 of her own family members, Nannie Doss never broke a smile and was nicknamed "The Giggly Granny." Some papers even described her as more of a cartoon character than a serial killer.

By the time she stopped her brutal reign over her family in the late '50s, she had murdered four of her husbands, one of her mother-in-laws, her two sisters, her grandson, her nephew, two of her own children, and even her own mother. With some poison, she killed every family member that she disagreed with.

Doss was sentenced to life in prison and died in 1965.

In 1974, Randall Woodfield was drafted into the NFL to play for the Green Bay Packers. What the NFL didn't know was that they just drafted one of America's deadliest serial killers.

Woodfield didn't become well known as a football player. Instead, he was known as the I-5 killer after he murdered over 40 people along the interstate in Oregon state in the early '80s. He would rob, rape, and kill his victims. His preferred method: having his victim lay down and shooting them in the back of the head.

He is currently serving a life sentence.

Harvey Robinson is known for being one of the youngest serial killers reported in the United States. At just 17 years old, Robinson attacked and raped five women, killing three of them, The Morning Call reports.

In some cases, he would break into the victim's home. One of his more brutal cases was when he broke into a 5-year-old girl's home, raped, and strangled her. She survived the attack.

Robinson was sentenced to death and remains on death row.

Although Harvey Robinson is known for being a young serial killer, Craig Price from Rhode Island was even younger. An article in The Boston Globe said it best: "He stabbed four of his neighbors to death in their own homes before he was old enough to drive."

In 1987, when he was just 13 years old, he stabbed Rebecca Spencer to death. Two years later, he killed Joan Heaton and her two daughters.

Price is currently in jail after confessing to the brutal murders. Since he was a minor at the time, he has not been sentenced for those crimes.

They called Donald Henry Gaskins "Pee Wee." It's a silly name for a sadistic man who took pleasure in torturing women sexually. In fact, Gaskins claimed he killed 200 hitchhikers. First, he would abduct them and then he would torture them. He broke their bones, bit them, and sometimes acted on his cannibalistic instincts.

He was put to death in 1991.

Before his execution, he even penned an autobiography called "Final Truth: The Autobiography of a Serial Killer." In the book, he calls his need to kill his "bothersomeness." In the '92 book, he wrote, "The bothersomeness was getting worse. It was making me ache. All over my body. My back … all the way down into my groin. The mere sight of a woman enraged these feelings … made them pulsate and grate in the pit of my stomach."

In 1994, Amy Anderson was the only woman to escape the clutches of Robert Leroy Anderson. After pushing her car off the road, he grabbed her and pulled her into a ditch. She fought back and got away.

Later, Anderson would be charged with two murders: Larisa Dumansky in 1994 and Piper Streyle in 1996. Although he only killed two women, authorities call him a serial killer that would have killed again if he had not been stopped. He was sentenced to death.

He appealed and the South Dakota Supreme Court (pictured) heard arguments about the case. Four days after the photo was taken, Anderson took his life in prison.

In the '90s, Paul Dennis Reid moved to Nashville to become a country music star. As he struggled to make his way into the country music scene, he took a job as a dishwasher at a local fast-food restaurant. But he was fired one night in 1994, apparently setting him down a murderous path.

From there, Reid went on to rob four different fast-food restaurants and kill people inside. In all, he murdered seven people, becoming known as the "Fast Food Killer."

He was sentenced to death but died from pneumonia in prison in 2013.

Dean Corll is the reason your parents probably told you to never take candy from strangers. Corll was that stranger who would lure children and teenagers into his van with the false promise of candy. In fact, he was called "The Candy Man." By 1973, Corll had killed 28 boys in Texas just outside of Houston. He also recruited two teenage boys as accomplices to help him.

Corll almost got away with the murders of almost 30 young boys because no one suspected him; he was a straight-laced man who worked at his mother's candy factory. But one of his accomplices, Wayne Henley, turned on Corll and shot him to death. Henley confessed and told the police about his work with Croll. He and the other accomplice are now serving their life sentence in prison.

Ted Bundy is perhaps one of the most recognizable serial killers on this list. Although he killed women all over the country, Bundy made his way to Utah in 1974. He was attending law school at the University of Utah at the time and tricked women with his clean, preppy looks. He would often lure them to him by faking an injury. He would then rape and murder them.

In Utah, he murdered three women. He was sentenced to 15 years in Utah State Prison but was extradited to Colorado. He was sentenced to death and met the electric chair in 1989.

When Israel Keyes killed himself in prison in 2012, he took a lot of answers with him. This much was for certain: He killed two sex workers between 2001 and 2005, according to WCVB. But investigators believe this serial killer murdered at least 11 people around the country.

Authorities also link him to a couple's murder in Burlington, Vermont. In 2011, Bill and Lorraine Currier were asleep in their home when Keyes broke in and caused a "blitz attack," waking them from their sleep and dragging them to his car. He brought them to an abandoned house and shot Bill to death. After Lorraine attempted to escape, he sexually assaulted her and strangled her to death.

No one knew for years who killed four women in Southern Virginia. They only knew the suspect as "The Southside Strangler." In each of the murders, he broke into their homes, raped and sodomized them, and then strangled them with a belt or rope.

DNA testing confirmed years later that Timothy Wilson Spencer was "The Southside Strangler." He was found guilty of raping and killing four women and was put to death in 1994.

The Green River in Washington state became notorious because of the number of bodies that were found there in the '90s. The discovery of the corpses led to another newsflash: The area had a serial killer. They nicknamed him "The Green River Killer."

DNA tests found Gary Ridgway was the murderer, and he confirmed that fact by confessing to over 75 murders. Ridgway said he would kidnap runaways and sex workers along the Route 99 and take them to his home. Once there, he would strangle them to death. He disposed of their bodies in the wooded areas near the Green River.

He was charged with 48 murders but was able to avoid the death sentence with a plea bargain. He is still living out his life sentence.

In 1927, the American Friendship Society acted as a matchmaking business. You'd pay an annual fee and receive a list of eligible lovers in your area. Harry F. Powers bought a subscription and listed an alias. The women who met with him for a date disappeared. By 1932, he killed and robbed five people, according to the New York Daily News. He was called "The Lonely Hearts Murderer."

He was sentenced to death and hanged in 1932.

Ed Gein seems like a character out of a horror movie. It makes sense because "Psycho's" Norman Bates and "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" were based on this killer. When police came into his house, they found body parts all over. In fact, some of the furnishings were made of body parts. He is even said to have worn a mask made from the skin of one of the victims.

He was only found guilty of one murder and was sent to a mental institution. He died of cancer in 1984.

The story of Polly Bartlett dates all the way back to 1868 and is surrounded by local lore. The story goes that Bartlett ran an inn with her family where she is said to have poisoned the guests with arsenic and would then ditch the bodies in a local corral. Authorities found 22 bodies of men who the innkeeper had allegedly killed.

Before she could stand trial for her crimes, she was shot to death — reportedly by a friend of one of the victims.

Bartlett is described as Wyoming's first and worst serial killer.

• Read more:
• 6 of the most notorious serial killers who were never caught
• The most infamous crime committed in every state
• FBI data reveals some of the most violent cities in nearly every state
• An expert reveals the 12 key traits common in serial killers, and some of them might surprise you