Hey, don’t be too harsh, for the longest time I thought the movie Predator was set in Vietnam.
To be fair though I first saw it when I was pretty young and realised my mistake when I rewatched it later…
Hitler doesn’t count, but what about some of the other Nazis? Amon Goeth, for example? Not for running the camp, as that was part of his job, but randomly picking off workers from his balcony with a rifle is going above and beyond. Dude just liked killing people. Even the Nazis thought he was crazy - just before the end of the war, he was relieved of command and put in a mental institution. But up to that point he’d had a very successful military career.
Bonus fact gleaned from Wiki: his grand daughter is half Nigerian. Take that, you Nazi fuck!
Going way back, Madame Delphine LaLaurie from New Orleans. She was a well-respected high-society person that threw lavish parties. Turned out she also kept slaves locked up in an attic and tortured them slowly to death. I believe it was discovered when a fire broke out and the responders found her victims. American Horror Story made this a part of their Coven series and she was played by Kathy Bates. Her mansion is on every ghost tour in the Quarter and was owned by Nicolas Cage for a time.
In my opinion, psycho genocidial types should be in a category of their own.
Reason: the issue, as I see it, is the conflict between appearance (famous, respectable) and reality (serial killer). Killers who are recruited by their own society to commit mass crimes don’t face such a conflict - they can be respected and famous because they committed such crimes. So I’d exclude psycho generals, genocidal Nazis, barbarian leaders and the like, in favour of those who attempted to keep their crimes hidden from their society to avoid infamy and punishment.
Yes, it is true that, when the Nazis were losing, they attempted to hide their crimes - but they were not hidden from “their” society, that is, from fellow Nazi leaders. Had the Nazis won, they would have boasted of their crimes.
“Subsequent to his conviction, his uniform was burned, his medals were destroyed and his vehicle crushed and scrapped.”
Wow. Even Canadjuns can be relentless bastards, given sufficient provocation.
Yes, I’d bet that the worst serial killer of all was probably some long-forgotten Central European aristocrat. For many generations in Europe, “ordinary people” were pretty much the personal playthings of high-ranking figures among the nobility and their allies in political/military/religious circles. (IMHO, this could be the underlying reason that WWII was inevitable and necessary - to put an end to that system once and for all)
That’s why I pointed out that it was in Guyana, and posted the Wikipedia link.
I vaguely remember reading about this case.
Someone mentioned Jack the Ripper earlier. He was almost certain to have been a local nobody. Certainly unlikely to have been from the upper echelons of society.