Hey YouTube, Jim here! Welcome to Top 10 Archive! Sometimes, getting mail is exciting,
especially when it’s not bills. Not every letter is an exciting one, though.
Some will have you swearing that you'll never check the mail ever again.
Prepare to be creeped out as we read the Top 10 Creepiest Letters By Serial Killers!
10. Dennis Rader Dennis Rader is known better as “BTK”
due to his “bind, torture, kill” method of murdering innocent people. He killed
ten people in Kansas over a period of time while living a double life as a family man.
He didn’t write letters to his victims, but he did write them to the police,
assuming that he’d outsmart them and never be caught. So what did these letters say? Well,
here’s a sample, with his typos and all: "It a big compicated [...] game my friend of the
monster play putting victims number down, follow them, checking up on them waiting in the dark,
waiting, waiting. Maybe you can stop him. I can’t. He has areadly [...] chosen his next victim."
At the end, just a, “Yours, Truly Guiltily, BTK.” He did manage to taunt investigators for a while,
but when he started integrating technology that was beyond his knowledge, things fell apart. He
asked investigators whether they’d be able to trace him if he sent letters in a floppy disk,
to which they lied saying “no”, but instead led them straight to Dennis Rader, a well-loved man in
his community who led a dark double life. 9. Richard Ramirez
Richard Ramirez is one of America’s scariest serial killers and rapists. Unlike other
murderers, he had no set demographic and constantly changed his M.O., leading investigators
to think that his murders were done by several killers. He started as a burglar and then
moved on to rape, and kidnap, eventually to all demographics, including old people and children.
He was eventually put in prison and died of cancer while on death row. While in prison, he received
a letter from a humorist named Bill Geerhart, who used to write to well-known celebrities and
criminals in the 1990s. He pretended to be a young boy named Billy asking Richard whether he should
stay in school. Richard responded saying: “got your letter. what school do you go? who’s your
friend? you should stay in school. send pictures,” among many other questions. Which leads one to
think some killers can’t be rehabilitated. 8. Albert Fish
Albert Fish isn’t as well known as many serial killers, but he was known as “The Boogeyman” for
preying on small children, allegedly murdering at least five. Then in 1928 he kidnapped, murdered,
and cannibalized the remains of 10-year-old Grace Budd. As if that wasn’t enough, he then sent
a letter to her mother detailing the entire incident. Here’s what the horrifying letter said:
“When all was ready, I went to the window and called her. Then I hid in a closet until she was
in the room. When she saw me all naked, she began to cry and tried to run downstairs. I grabbed her,
and she said she would tell her mama. How she did kick, bite, and scratch.
I (then) cut her in small pieces so I could take my meat to my rooms, cook and eat it.”
As traumatizing as this must have been to read, the letter thankfully led to his capture because
he used unique branding on an envelope. 7. Jane Toppan
It’s not just male killers that write letters. This nurse-turned-killer, named Jane Toppan,
like to send them as well. During the late 19th century, she would essentially edge patients on
the brink of death with morphine and atropine. In the end, she had confessed to 31 murders, which
also included people outside of the hospital. So what did she write? The letter was, to no
surprise, the press. She had already been found guilty and sentenced to a mental institution.
In the letter, she says: "That is my ambition. To have killed more people. More helpless people than
any man or woman who has ever lived." 6. Carl Panzram
Panzram was a killer from the 1920s who, while on death row, started writing letters that
served as dark, detailed confessions of his crimes. He wrote: “In my lifetime I have murdered
21 human beings, I have committed thousands of burglaries, robberies, larcenies, arsons and,
last but not least, I have committed sodomy on more than 1,000 male human beings. For all
these things I am not in the least bit sorry.” Normally, criminals take the time on death row
to make amends, apologize, and make good with whatever God they believe in before their
death. Not Panzram. He was hanged in 1930 and he allegedly spat in the executioner’s face saying
"Yes, hurry it up, you Hoosier bastard! I could kill a dozen men while you're screwing around!"
5. Keith Jesperson Also known as the Happy Face Killer, Keith
Jesperson was a Canadian murderer who branded himself by putting happy faces on letters written
to the authorities. Since he was a trucker, he had the anonymity of passing through a town,
picking up women, killing them, and moving on. He wrote anywhere he had the chance,
allegedly writing in truck stop bathrooms confessing to crimes. He wrote a letter to
the Portland Oregonian saying, “God will be my judge when I die… It all started when I wondered
what it would be like to kill someone. And I found out. What a nightmare this has been.”
It was only when his obsession with killing women got too close to home that he was caught. He
strangled his live-in girlfriend and lost all the anonymity he once had in his truck driving murder
spree. He’s now serving a life sentence in prison, after 8 confirmed victims were linked to him.
4. Jack The Ripper Quite different than what it was like for BTK to
write a letter. When a murderer in the 1800s wrote one, the penmanship was spotless. The content?
Not so much. Jack the Ripper was a London murderer whose victims’ bodies were found
with their throats slashed and their abdomen mutilated. As if that wasn’t terrifying enough,
in September of 1888, the Central News Agency received a letter, which at first they thought
was a prank of some sort. Here’s what it said: "The next job I do, I shall clip the lady’s ears
off and send to the police officers just for jolly, wouldn’t you. Keep this letter
back till I do a bit more work, then give it out straight. My knife’s so nice and sharp I want to
get to work right away if I get a chance. Good Luck. Yours truly, Jack the Ripper."
If they didn’t believe it right away, they sure did three days later when in a double murder,
the killer cut a piece of the victim’s earlobe. One of the most haunting parts of the Ripper’s
letters is his attempt at writing them in blood but had to settle for red ink instead.
"I saved some of the proper red stuff in a ginger beer bottle over the last job to write with,
but it went thick like glue and I cant use it. Red ink is fit enough I hope ha.
ha." 3. Jeffrey Dahmer
Dahmer is no doubt one of the most screwed up serial killers in history. He killed 17
men and boys, performing sex acts, and then ate their bodies. Dahmer wrote this letter to the
judge in 1989 asking that he be released from prison following 10 months imprisonment on a
child molestation conviction. He said that his actions were deplorable and promised to be a
better member of society. Dahmer was released in March 1990 and went on to kill 12 more people.
2. The Zodiac Killer Another famously unsolved case is that
of the Zodiac Killer. He’s known as the Zodiac for sending encrypted letters, which, all but one
has still not been decoded. Here’s what the one decoded letter says, from what the schoolteacher
and his partner who solved it were able to tell: I LIKE KILLING PEOPLE BECAUSE IT IS SO MUCH FUN IT
IS MORE FUN THAN KILLING WILD GAME IN THE FORREST BECAUSE MAN IS THE MOST DANGEROUE ANAMAL OF
ALL TO KILL SOMETHING GIVES ME THE MOST THRILLING EXPERENCE IT IS EVEN BETTER THAN GETTING YOUR
ROCKS OFF WITH A GIRL THE BEST PART OF IT IS THAE WHEN I DIE I WILL BE REBORN IN PARADICE
AND ALL THEI HAVE KILLED WILL BECOME MY SLAVES I WILL NOT GIVE YOU MY NAME BECAUSE YOU WILL
TRY TO SLOI DOWN OR ATOP MY COLLECTIOG OF SLAVES FOR MY AFTERLIFE. EBEORIETEMETHHPITI.
1. Gary Ridgway The Green River Killer was
a truck painter who would go on to kill 70-85 women in Washington in the 1980s and 1990s,
the most of any killer in U.S. history. After he was caught with DNA testing,
he sent letters to his wife, including one where he confessed to her after coming clean to police.
Here’s what a fragment of that letter said: "I made a prayer to God I will stop killing
if I don’t get caught, I had to live with all that in me all those years. I couldn't tell
you. I was like a alcoholic dry for a time. Then fell off the wagon. I miss you so much."
Thanks for watching! Fortunately for me, the creepiest letter I ever received was from a
bill collector. How about you? Have you gotten any creepy letters, or perhaps written a few yourself?
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