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20 Infamous Black Serial Killers

*Originally published by Faith in February 2023 and Updated by Ian. S in March 2024

When the topic of serial killers arises, one would automatically picture a reclusive white person who does not like to associate with the members of the community as they do not want people to know that he is a serial killer. Statistics show that serial killers about 50% of them are usually white males. However, this does not mean that there are no black serial killers as they make up 30% of the people terrorizing society.

This article will look at the twenty infamous black serial killers who terrorized people before they were apprehended. Most of these serial killers are serving life sentences because of the severity of the crimes that they committed.

1. Samuel Little

He is one of the deadliest serial killers in the history of the United States of America. Samuel Little admitted to killing 93 people even though he was convicted for fifty of these murders and all of his victims were women. The serial killer and rapist evaded the legal system for his killings for almost 40 years despite being detained numerous times.

Little was finally apprehended in 2012 after the Los Angeles Police Department made a connection between Little and two unsolved cases. After his trial which happened in 2014 and found guilty, he was given three consecutive life sentences without the possibility of release. Sam Little passed away in December 2020 at the age of 80.

2. Wayne Williams

Popularly known for the  Atlanta Child Murders, Wayne William is top of the list of the most feared black serial killers. At the time of his last murder, he was just 23 years old. He is believed to have killed more than twenty people. However, not all of his victims were identified. Williams was apprehended by the police in 1982 for the murder of two men, Jimmy Rayne and Nathaniel Carter in Atlanta, Georgia. He was tried for these murders and given two life sentences which he is currently serving in a prison in Georgia.

It is believed that Wayne Williams was the man behind the Atlanta Child Murders that saw twenty-eight children mercilessly murdered. This is because once he was arrested the murders stopped and thus supported the theory that he was behind them. Wayne maintains that he is innocent and has never been charged with these murders.

3. Mark Goudeau

He is an American serial killer, rapist, thief, and kidnapper born in September 1964. He is commonly known as the Baseline Killer. Goudeau was charged with several crimes including nine murders, fifteen cases of sexual assault, and other minor crimes that happened in Phoenix in 2005 and 2006. Mark was arrested in 2004 after he sexually assaulted two sisters and one was heavily pregnant. He was linked to the assault after the DNA evidence was collected and it confirmed that it was he who committed the crime. He was tried and sentenced to 438 years in prison for sexual assault. When it was later discovered that he was the Baseline Killer, he was sentenced to death.

4. Paul Durousseau

Paul is also known as the Cabbie Killer. Unlike other serial killers who are often charged with several counts of murder, he was only charged with one but accused of killing many others. Durousseau came from Jacksonville, Florida and he was a cab driver who would get to know his victims before killing them. He is accused of raping and strangling his victims in Georgia and Florida for six years.

After being detained in 2003 for the 1999 murder of Tyresa Mack, Durousseau was later found guilty and given a death sentence using lethal injection in Jacksonville, Florida. Durousseau’s previous killings were not brought up for trial by the prosecution during his trial. His death sentence was overturned in 2017 and a fresh trial was mandated by the Florida Supreme Court.

5. Debra Brown

Debra brown went on a killing spree that lasted for 53 days with her lover and accomplice Alton Coleman. The pair murdered people in six states with one of the victims known as Tamika Turks who was seven years old being murdered in Gary, Indiana after they were lured into the forest with her aunt. Her death led to the arrest of the two after her aunt managed to escape and called the police.

Throughout their 53-day crime spree, Coleman and Brown were complicit in 14 armed robberies, 7 rapes, 8 murders, and 8 rapes. Due to Brown’s mental incapacity, the death sentence that had been given to her in 1986 was overturned in 2018. Brown was the only female death row inmate in Indiana before the change in sentencing.

6. Roberta Elder

Roberta is among the few black women serial killers in American history. She got the nickname Mrs Bluebeard as she was responsible for the death of her family member. It is said that her killings started very early but they flew under the radar until her husband died under mysterious circumstances. When he was tested, they found arsenic in his body. The poison was also found in his daughter’s body who had passed away. The suspicions grew and it was established that Roberta was killing her family members so that she could collect the insurance money. Even though the evidence was circumstantial, she was convicted and given a life sentence.

7. Derrick Todd Lee

The Baton Rouge Serial Killer, also known as Derrick Todd Lee was an American serial killer.  Lee murdered seven women in the Baton Rouge region between 1992 and 2003. Lee was detained for stalking women and keeping watch over them at home before he was accused of murder. Despite this, he was first disregarded by the authorities because they believed the murderer was white when he wasn’t. This meant that he continued with his crimes as the local authorities did not think it was a black man committing the crimes.

8. Anthony Sowell

Anthony had been in prison because of a rape charge and after he was released he went on a killing spree that led to him being dubbed the Cleveland Strangler. He mainly targeted sex workers and drug addicts as they were not easily noticed to be missing. He lured the women into his house by promising them alcohol and other drugs but ended up killing them.

A woman who managed to get away from Sowell provided the police with the tip. In 2009, Sowell was detained when authorities found 10 dead bodies in his home. At the age of 61, Sowell passed away from a fatal disease at Ohio’s Franklin Medical Center.

9. Benjamin Atkins

Atkins, also known as The Woodward Corridor Killer, was a serial killer and rapist who killed, tortured, and raped 11 people, most of whom were drug users and sex workers, between Highland Park and Detroit between December 1991 and August 1992.

The fact that Atkins was sexually assaulted when he was eleven years old might have influenced his choice to become a serial killer. Atkins received a sentence of 11 consecutive life terms in prison in 1992 for eleven counts of murder. He later died from HIV in 1997.

10. Lorenzo Gilyard

The serial killer was well known by the nickname the Kansas City Strangler. He was a former trash company manager. He is believed to have murdered and raped more than 13 women from 1977 to 1993. In 2007, Gilyard was convicted of six counts of murder and sentenced to life in prison. To date, he has not spoken publicly about his crimes and what prompted him to do them.

11. Graig Price

When he was 13 to 15 years old, Craig Chandler Price committed several crimes in Warwick, Rhode Island. He was, however, apprehended in 1989 for four homicides that had occurred in his neighborhood which were the killings of a lady, her two daughters, and another woman two years prior. He had a prior petty theft conviction on his record.

12. Darren Vann

Darren was a serial killer known for murdering 7 women in 2014. His killing spree ended when he was arrested and he took the police to an abandoned warehouse where he had killed his last victim, Anith Jones. Gary was given a life sentence after he pleaded guilty to murdering his victims. He took the plea deal so that he could avoid getting a death sentence.

13. Lonnie Franklin Jr.

Also known as the Grim Sleeper, Lonnie was a serial killer who targeted black sex workers. His nickname came about because he was a quiet and friendly person who one would not expect to be a serial killer. Franklin Jr. was apprehended and found guilty of killing nine women and a child in 2016 after a more than 20-year career of preying on vulnerable and frequently disregarded women.

At least 25 homicides are thought to have been the result of his actions. Ten counts of first-degree murder and one act of attempted murder resulted in a death sentence for him. He died in 2021 while awaiting death row.

14. Chester Turner

Chester was found guilty of killing ten women and an unborn child in Los Angeles in 2007. He killed his victims by raping them and then strangling them. He was discovered after DNA evidence connected him to the murders that happened between 1987 and 1998. He was sentenced to life in prison and became one of the most prolific killers in the city’s history.

15. Carl Eugene Watts

He was one of the most prolific serial killers in the 1970s and early 1980s and was nicknamed the Sunday Morning Slasher. During that period, Eugene murdered 14 women. Before torturing his victims, Watts used to kidnap them from their homes. Watts was sentenced to 60 years in jail in 1982 after he confessed to 12 murder charges. Prostate cancer claimed his life in prison in 2007.

16. Maury Travis

Maury Troy Travis was an American serial killer who was named in a federal criminal complaint for the murders of two women – Alysia Greenwade and Betty James – in 2001.

A former hotel waiter on parole for robbery, Travis claimed in a letter to have killed 17 women, though authorities had varying estimates, with some believing he may have murdered up to 20 victims.

At least one videotape showing Travis murdering and torturing victims was found during a search of his home in Ferguson, Missouri. After being arrested for the two confirmed murders, Travis died by suicide while in custody in St. Louis County.

While he acknowledged at least 17 killings in his letter, police believed his total victim count could potentially be as high as 20 women.

17. Eddie Lee Mosley

, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Eddie Lee Mosley was an American serial killer and rapist who murdered at least eight women in Fort Lauderdale, Florida between 1973 and 1987. Though he was the prime suspect for many years, Mosley was not arrested until 2001 following DNA evidence linking him to the crimes.

Tragically, two other men – Frank Lee Smith and Jerry Townsend – were wrongfully convicted and served lengthy prison sentences for murders later attributed to Mosley before being exonerated.

While only eight murders could be definitively connected to Mosley, authorities speculated his true victim count may have been as high as 16 murders, in addition to dozens of rapes. His exact number of victims remains unknown.

18. John Floyd Thomas

, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

John Floyd Thomas Jr. is an American serial killer who is currently serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole for the murders of seven women in the Los Angeles area during the 1970s and 1980s. As part of a plea deal in 2011 to avoid the death penalty, Thomas confessed to seven counts of murder.

However, investigators believe Thomas may have been one of the most prolific serial killers in Los Angeles history, with suspicions that his actual victim count could range from 10 to 15 additional murders beyond the confirmed seven he was convicted for.

While the full extent of his crimes remains unknown, Thomas’ confirmed killings alone have cemented his place as one of the most deadly serial murderers in the city’s history.

19. Jake Bird

Jake Bird was an American serial killer who was executed in Washington in 1947 for the murders of two women in Tacoma. However, he was known to have killed at least 11 other people across several states between 1930 and 1947. Before his execution, Bird implicated himself in up to 46 murders.

In 1991, criminologist Eric W. Hickey wrote about how the Bird case challenged stereotypes of serial killers being predominantly Caucasian males, as Bird was an African American who stalked and killed dozens of white women across various states in the 1940s.

Hickey noted that revelations about Bird’s crimes continued to defy the traditionally held profiles of serial killers, who were more commonly associated with urban violence when it came to African American perpetrators.

20. Harrison Graham

Harrison Frank “Marty” Graham is an American serial killer who murdered seven women in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania between mid-1986 and mid-1987, keeping their remains in his apartment.

In 1988, Graham was found guilty on all charges and initially sentenced to death, though his sentences were later commuted to life in prison. Chillingly, Graham lived less than 1.5 miles away from the home of Gary M. Heidnik, another murderer who was arrested around the same time for committing similar crimes in the same city.

The proximity of these two prolific serial killers operating simultaneously in Philadelphia added to the horror of their apprehensions.