As a teenager, Wayne Nance developed an interest in Satanism that may have led to his first murder. He became obsessed with the idea of making a human sacrifice — and in the spring of 1974, he boasted to a friend: “It’s been done.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

His victims’ deaths were often ruled “unnatural and accidental,” leaving Gilbert Paul Jordan free to perfect his M.O. — forcing Indigenous women in Vancouver to drink themselves to death. Unable to keep him behind bars, police surveilled the barber until they could catch him in the act. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

An alcoholic from his teenage years onward, Gilbert Paul Jordan spent his young adulthood in 1950s Vancouver tallying up arrests for theft, assault, and drug possession. Then he discovered a crime he wouldn’t be punished for: plying a victim with alcohol until she was poisoned to death. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

By the 1990s, Ángel Maturino Reséndiz was a seasoned murderer using America’s extensive railroad system to strike new victims, then flee. But eventually, authorities caught onto the pattern in his murders. In 1999, their investigation came to a surprising stop.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

After years of incarceration, rejection, and failure, Ángel Maturino Reséndiz's most violent impulses began to surface. Between 1986 and 1999, he traveled the U.S. by freight train, murdering “sinners” in a so-called mission from God. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In 1984, Wilder went on a weeks-long killing spree across the U.S., abducting, raping and murdering as many young women as he could find. As he targeted malls across the country, the FBI launched a manhunt for the Australian fugitive.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Posing as a modeling agent in the 1980s, Wilder lured young girls and women to secluded places where he would photograph them in explicit poses before sexually assaulting them. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

By day, Robert Hansen was a devoted husband, devout Christian, and respected member of the Anchorage community. By night, he abducted young women from clubs and drove them deep into the Alaskan wilderness, where he hunted them like prey.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Bullied from a young age, Robert Hansen’s resentment toward the people in his hometown manifested in different ways — most alarmingly, arson. In 1967, the troubled baker and avid hunter moved to Alaska, and developed a deadly pastime: abducting and assaulting women. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

After his first murder, Keith Jesperson felt unstoppable, and went on something of a killing spree. But eventually, he got annoyed that he wasn't getting credit for his hard work, and started sending authorities chilling notes signed with a happy face. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Always shy and a little curious, Keith Jesperson lived a troubled childhood. Beaten by his father, and always struggling to make friends, Keith grew up vowing he'd never hurt children. But he made no such promise when it came to women. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

After killing dozens of people and getting away with it, Alexander Pichushkin got bored with his routine. So, he mixed things up — in brutal fashion. His unchecked maneuvers amounted to at least 48 murders in Moscow. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

One of Russia’s most prolific serial killers was an avid chess player. First introduced to the pastime by his grandfather, the young Alexander Pichushkin finally found something he could excel at. But in 1992, his competitive urges were drawn to a different kind of game… Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In the final few months of 2006, Ipswich was shaken by the strangling deaths of several sex workers. It didn't take long for Steve Wright to relax into his new role as cold-blooded killer. But the bolder — and more bizarre — he became, the closer he got to sealing his own fate.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

He was an unassuming man whose Jekyll and Hyde personality obscured increasingly violent tendencies. And in 2006, in the small English town of Ipswich, Steve Wright began targeting sex workers — abducting, strangling, and dumping the bodies of five women. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It was called the crime of the century: In 1966, Richard Speck drifted into Chicago, and unleashed a whirlwind of violence and rage onto a group of student nurses. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In the early 1980s, emergency services in St. Paul, Minnesota began receiving odd calls from a distraught-sounding man. At first reporting brutal attacks on women, he quickly began taking credit for the murders, and begged police to stop him. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Throughout his shocking rampage that left dozens of people injured or dead, the newly dubbed “Vampire of Düsseldorf” Peter Kürten grew more and more confident — even writing into a local paper with the location of a victim’s body. But his confidence would be his undoing. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Unfulfilled by bestiality, a young Peter Kürten turned to murder — and discovered his body’s reaction to the sight of blood. As his dark desires festered, he embraced sadism in all its forms. And in 1929, a gruesome killing spree earned him a chilling moniker. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

When British heiresses Dora and Claire Williamson reached out to Linda Hazzard, she might have thought draining their bank accounts would be easy enough. But she didn't count on the sisters’ resilience, or the might of one formidable governess... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In the early 1900s, Linda Hazzard marketed herself as a doctor, and claimed that she could cure any ailment with her special starvation regimens. Except, instead of curing her patients, she was killing them. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

After spending years in and out of prison, Charles “The Serpent” Sobhraj was determined to make something of himself. To do that, he needed money — only now, he knew better than to leave behind any witnesses. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Growing up in Vietnam, India and France in the 1940s and ‘50s, Charles Sobhraj never truly fit in anywhere — not even with his family. When they turned their backs on him for good, he became a con man smuggling cars, escaping debts, stealing from tourists… and breaking out of prisons around the world.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In the years since the Satanic Panic, it's become obvious that the crimes people were accused of never really happened. But while none of the nightmarish stories of ritual abuse in Satan’s name were true, it doesn’t mean there weren’t real victims…  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Emboldened by power- and money-hungry conmen, Evangelical doomsdayers set the stage for an epic showdown of biblical proportions. The fight for the souls of every last American was beginning, they claimed, and Satan was coming to drag us all to hell. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

From Adolfo Costanzo and the Narcosatanists to the gruesome Chicago Rippers, these horrific groups showed that fears of murderous devil-worshipping cults weren't entirely unfounded. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In the 1980s, “Satanic Panic” was a mass hysteria that consumed communities and ruined lives—all over things that never even happened. In this new five-part series, we’re examining the origins of the panic, tracing back through the decades to see how the fear of Satan’s influence in society swept across North America.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In the 1980s, “Satanic Panic” was a mass hysteria that consumed communities and ruined lives—all over things that never even happened. In this new five-part series, we’re examining the origins of the panic, tracing back through the decades to see how the fear of Satan’s influence in society swept across North America.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In the fall of 1977, Los Angeles was on high alert, so 43-year-old Angelo Buono Jr. and 26-year-old Kenny Bianchi knew they had to play it safe. But as their death toll grew even higher, their relationship began to crumble.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

These killer cousins terrorized Los Angeles in the late ‘70s. Despite very different upbringings, Angelo Buono Jr. and Kenny Bianchi both formed sadistic attitudes toward women that led to them cruising the streets of Hollywood, posing as undercover cops, patrolling for victims.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

After their first brutal murder, Suzan and Michael Carson fled San Francisco, intent on continuing their quest to rid the world of witches.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

They set out to murder witches in the early 1980s, moving up and down the coast of the Pacific Northwest. Suzan Carson believed she was destined to rid the world of evil… All she needed was a willing follower to wield the knife. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On the outside, Karla Homolka and Paul Bernardo appeared to be a perfect couple—but they held a dark secret: Paul’s sadistic aggressions were seemingly unstoppable, spurred on by Karla’s compliance. The secrets—and the bodies—piled up.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

When Paul Bernardo met his bride-to-be Karla Homolka in October 1987, he had already raped his first victim. But Paul's sadistic sexual appetite only seemed to deepen Karla's desire for him. And when his sick interest turned toward her 15-year-old sister, Karla let one thing guide her next move: her unrelenting need to please him. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

By torturing and killing his fellow inmate, Robert Maudsley won his escape from Broadmoor Mental Hospital. But when confronted with more pedophiles at Wakefield Prison, he knew he couldn't stay there. Unfortunately, no one was listening to him. And the only thing that had ever gotten him attention was killing... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Abused by his parents from a young age, Robert Maudsley spent his childhood bouncing around orphanages and foster homes before running away in 1969. He spent years living on the streets of London, where he met a man with a dark secret… and decided that man couldn’t live. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In 1959, Eric Cooke committed his first murder in the sleepy city of Perth, Australia. And, having gotten away with the crime, it seemed nothing would slow down his bloody rampage. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Born in 1931 to a caring mother and alcoholic father, Eric Edgar Cooke had a turbulent home life. His string of break-ins and petty thefts were met with sympathetic authorities who gave Cooke second and third chances… But their leniency was cast aside in favor of more violence. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

While Joseph Swango’s patients died at alarming rates, few people seemed capable of connecting the mysterious deaths with the doctor-in-training. The alarm bells only rang once he began poisoning his colleagues…  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

As a teenager in the ‘70s, Joseph Swango had an intense fascination with the macabre, even keeping a scrapbook full of newspaper clippings about murder and car crashes. As he got older, he realized that one career in particular would give him daily contact with death: medicine. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In the late ‘80s, Aileen trolled the highways outside of Daytona, Florida looking for johns. But these days, she was interested in more than sex work. Her johns had always treated her as disposable. Now, armed with a .22 caliber handgun, she was ready to return the favor. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

More abused than loved, Aileen Wuornos suffered through her childhood in 1960s Michigan. She became a sex worker and petty thief, eventually hitchhiking to Florida—where the work that made her an outcast led to the murder that made her infamous. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

For decades, it seemed like Charlie Brandt's first murder was a shocking, unexplainable anomoly—something he would never repeat. But in 2004, another violent crime would make headlines, and unearth secrets no one ever saw coming. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In January 1971, 13-year-old Charlie Brandt retrieved his father's gun and committed a shocking murder, saying it was like he “was sort of programmed to do it.” After 17 months in a mental health facility, he was free, and everything returned to normal… Or so it seemed. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

By the early 1980s, Watts had stabbed three women to death. As police closed in on him, setting up tails and even bringing him in for questioning—but unable to detain him—he fled to Texas, where he disappeared into the city then known as “The Murder Capital of the U.S.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Unable to contain his dark fantasies and suppressed rage, Coral Eugene Watts targeted women in Michigan and Texas starting in 1974, and continuing for nearly a decade. His crime sprees were a reign of terror that for him, brought a perverse kind of relief. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Still desperate to ignite a race war in the United States, Joseph Paul Franklin sought more prominent targets, hoping to draw attention to his cause. But he also found satisfaction in impulsive, isolated murders. When it seemed no one would ever catch him, he got careless. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

He studied Mein Kampf. Changed his name. And joined white supremacist groups across the country. Fueled by hateful rhetoric and armed with guerilla warfare tactics, Joseph Paul Franklin set out to ignite a nationwide race war—right in the midst of the Civil Rights movement. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices