The Creepiest Things Serial Killers Ever Said

Serial killers tend to not really have much of a verbal filter. That's not really shocking given that they also kill people, which means manners aren't generally high on their lists of things they'd like to improve about themselves.

In fact, even when serial killers are facing the ultimate consequence of their horrible actions — their own executions — they tend to be more preoccupied with maintaining that serial killer image than making people think they have remorse — or an actual human soul or something. For a captured serial killer, fame and public attention sometimes takes the place of all the evil stuff they used to do, and you can't keep being a famous serial killer if you say boring things.

During the 20th century, 1,172 serial killers were apprehended in the United States. They probably all said a creepy thing or two, but alas, there isn't room to quote every one of them. Instead, this list includes the creepiest of the creepy, including quotes from a few serial killers that were active outside of the United States and before the 20th century, and quotes from history's most notorious serial killers. It's also worth noting that some of these quotes have taken on a mythology all their own, and sometimes it's hard to know for sure when they were said, and even if they were said. Serial killer stories can become sort of legendary, and that makes it hard to separate fiction from fact. We've done our best. Sleep well. 

Jane Toppan liked to keep her hands clean when she killed. Her murder weapon of choice was morphine, and she exclusively murdered people who couldn't fight back. Not that that makes her any worse than any of the other world's serial killers, but there is a special place in hell for people who kill the helpless.

Toppan's first victims, in 1885, were patients she was caring for as a resident nurse at Cambridge Hospital. According to All That's Interesting, that's where she developed an affinity for giving people high doses of painkillers just to see what would happen. No one seemed to notice; in fact, at the end of her tenure she was congratulated for being an excellent nurse and sent off to work at Massachusetts General Hospital. She experimented on a few more patients at her new post before being ... fired. Never mind, though, because then went on to become a private nurse, so it's not like poisoning people damaged her career or anything. 

Subsequent murders included an entire family and her own foster sister before someone finally caught on to what she was doing. Her creepiest quote: "That is my ambition, to have killed more people — more helpless people — than any man or woman who has ever lived." (In case you're wondering, she didn't reach her goal. Though some people think she may have killed up to 70 people, Columbian serial killer Luis Garavito may have killed up to 300, most of them street kids).

Jeffry Dahmer was one of the 20th century's most infamous serial killers. Evidently, he didn't really even like killing all that much; he just did it to get people to hang out with him. Sort of.  According to Biography, Dahmer killed 17 men and boys between 1978 and 1991. He usually drugged them, then strangled them, then cut them up into pieces for easy disposal. He often photographed his murders-in-progress and sometimes ate parts of his victims.

Dahmer is famous for telling a Dateline reporter (via Oxygen) that although he disliked killing people, turning them into zombies was totally cool. "The killing was a means to an end," he said. "That was the least satisfactory part. I didn't enjoy doing that. That's why I tried to create living zombies ... but it never worked. No, the killing was not the objective. I just wanted to have the person under my complete control, not having to consider their wishes, being able to keep them there as long as I wanted."

Incidentally, Dahmer was killed by a fellow prisoner in 1994 because of his habit of making severed-limb art out of prison food. You know, just to freak everybody out.

Nicknamed "The Night Stalker," Richard Ramirez killed at least 14 people between 1984 and 1985. While many serial killers leave weeks or months or even years between killings, Ramirez killed frequently — his most prolific spree was five attacks in 10 days, though one victim was lucky enough to survive.

According to CBS, Ramirez was an equal-opportunity killer. He attacked men, women, and kids and used knives and guns — whatever was handy. He didn't always kill everyone he attacked, either. When he was finally apprehended, it became clear that he wasn't just a psychopath, he was also kind of a well-spoken psychopath, though the well-spoken things he said were always super terrifying. Among them, the infamous killer had this to say: "We've all got the power in our hands to kill, but most people are afraid to use it. The ones who aren't afraid, control life itself."

Also, just after his death sentence was handed down, he said, "Big deal. Death always comes with the territory. I'll see you in Disneyland." Jokes on him 'cause death row inmates don't usually get field trips to Disneyland. He did manage to avoid the executioner, though — Ramirez died from lymphoma in prison in 2013.

John Wayne Gacy is unique amongst serial killers because he was a murderer and also a clown with the delightful stage name "Pogo." He probably didn't murder anyone while actually wearing the clown costume, but you never know. It's not like he left any witnesses.

According to the Chicago Tribune, Gacy tortured and killed 33 men and boys between 1972 and 1978 and buried many of them in his own crawl space, you know, so as not to make it obvious. Police suspected Gacy for a while before they finally got enough evidence to arrest him. Evidently, he was kind of a conspicuous suspect because he was known for having parties and inviting a lot of teenage boys to his house, and mostly not killing them. Mostly.

Like many serial killers, Gacy didn't think he was going to get caught and was brazen enough that he even invited the two cops who were tailing him out to breakfast one morning. He told them about his exploits as a single guy and his job as a clown at children's parties and then leaned in and said, "You know, clowns can get away with murder." So that's creepy, but Gacy was so very, very brazen that he's also quoted as saying, "All the police are going to get me for is running a funeral parlor without a license." Which, unfortunately for Gacy, did not turn out to be true. He was executed for his crimes on May 10, 1994.

If you want to argue about semantics, Charles Manson wasn't a serial killer. He didn't actively participate in most of the Manson Family murders — unless you count the murder of "Shorty" Shea or that time he cut someone's face open with a samurai sword — in fact, he wasn't even present for most of the killings attributed to his "family." According to the Washington Post, though, he was still convicted on seven counts of first-degree murder, on account of the fact that he was the guy who actually ordered the crimes.

The FBI has a formal definition for serial murder: "The unlawful killing of two or more victims by the same offender(s), in separate events." So if "killing" means by your own hand, then Manson was not a serial killer, because he was probably only partly responsible for two deaths ("Shorty" Shea and Gary Hinman). On the other hand, when you're convicted of multiple counts of murder and several of them happened on separate occasions, you're kind of a serial killer, whether you have bloody hands or not. So Manson gets to be on this list.

Anyway, whatever category you put him into, Charles Manson is a terrifying sociopath who likes to say terrifying things, because, like most jailed killers, that's really all he's got left. One of his most famous creepy quotes happened during an interview with MSNBC. "Believe me," he told the camera, "if I started murdering people, there'd be none of you left."

Some serial killers just kill whoever, so certain of their invincibility they think they'll never get caught. Others don't seem to really care if they get caught. Still others are smarter about choosing their victims. Samuel Little killed people for an astonishing 40 years, mostly without attracting any attention from law enforcement. At all.

Little's victims, by his own count, numbered 93. According to the Washington Post, he managed to remain anonymous because he preyed only on those he was sure no one would miss: runaways, drug addicts, and sex workers. No one put his victims' photos on the front page, expressed outrage at the shoddy police work, or appeared on the news to tearfully beg for the return of their loved one. These were people who could vanish and no one would really notice. Little was such a successful serial killer that he eventually got old enough to retire from serial killing. His last victim died in 2005; he was only apprehended because someone opened up a couple of cold case files. During one of Little's many arrests on other charges, he'd given a DNA sample, and police were able to match him to genetic material that had been collected from those old crime scenes.

Little clearly viewed his victims as inhuman, as evidenced by something he said during a police interview: "I'd go back to the same city sometimes and pluck me another grape. How many grapes do you all got on the vine here?"

Joe Metheny wasn't a really prolific killer, which is why you've probably never heard of him. He did have a pretty unique M.O., though, and an even more unique way of disposing of his victims.

Metheny's wife left him in 1994 and took their son with her — maybe, who knows, because he was a psychopath? Anyway, according to All That's Interesting, Metheny was determined to find them and went on his killing spree solely with that as his motive. When two homeless guys who knew his wife said they didn't know where she was, he killed them. Then he killed a fisherman who might have witnessed his crime. He was later arrested but acquitted of the murders, and he was set free to kill even more people.

Metheny evidently did not ever get over being jilted by his wife, and his other seven victims — mostly sex workers and homeless people — were just killed out of rage and spite. Here's where it gets really awful, though. At some point, Metheny hit on an ingenious way of hiding the bodies of his victims. He opened a roadside barbecue stand, ground his victims up into hamburger meat, mixed them with pork, put them in burgers, and sold them to passers by. His creepiest quote? "The human body tastes very similar to pork. If you mix it together no one can tell the difference."