Serial Killers That Were Killed In Prison

The idea of justice is an interesting thing, and according to research done with a group of three- and five-year-old children, the desire to see it done is something that humans were born with. A study published in 2015 (via ABC) came to the conclusion that even as children, humans were incredibly likely to reach out and help those who had been hurt by another, or had something stolen from them. They were also pretty highly motivated when it came to punishing those who had done something wrong, but overall, researchers came to the conclusion that problem-solving in early education might be more effective if more focus was put on helping the victim than punishing the perpetrator. 

That's great for schoolyard arguments, but what happens when the crime is on a scale so large that most people can't even fathom it?

That's where we get into the idea of justice vs. revenge. Psychology Today says that while there's a bit of overlap between the two, one of the big differences is that justice is a rational punishment, and revenge is an emotional one. And when crimes are on the scale of those of a serial killer, it's easy to see even how other prisoners might want to get a piece of that. It absolutely happens: Where there's a will there's a way, and even though protective custody is a thing, these serial killers met their end at the hands of another prisoner, before justice could be satisfied.

Leslie Bailey was a member of a gang that the NNJournal says has been described as "The Dirty Dozen," and under the guidance of serial killers and pedophile Sidney Cooke, he and his cronies were responsible for recruiting or kidnapping at-risk and underage boys into a prostitution ring that was active in the 1970s and 1980s.

Bailey, says the Independent, was convicted in 1989 of the killing of 14-year-old Jason Swift, and in 1991 was given a life sentence for the murder of 6-year-old Barry Lewis. It wasn't until 1992 that he plead guilty to the 1984 murder of seven-year-old Mark Tildesley, and was given the final of his three life sentences. Law enforcement add that it's unclear just how many boys were killed by the gang, and estimates range from "several," to a reported 15 (according to a jailhouse confession by Cooke), to 20 (via The Guardian).

In 1993, law enforcement confirmed that Bailey had been found in his cell in Whitemoor Prison, and although it was first suspected that he may have committed suicide, the medical examiner later confirmed that he had been murdered. After investigation, two other inmates — John Brookes and Michael Cain — were tried and convicted of the killing, which was reportedly done as revenge for Bailey's child victims.

The Spanish-language news outlet interviewed Daniel Camargo Barbosa in 1988, when the courts were getting ready to hand down their sentence. The then 58-year-old had confessed to an unthinkable series of crimes: the rape and murder of 71 women. That, El Pais says, was only over a 2-year period in Ecuador, and it represented only a fraction of the time he had been killing and a small portion of his victims. In his native Colombia, he was associated with a similar series of crimes, with around 80 possible victims.

His first Ecuadorian victim disappeared on December 18, 1984, when she was just nine years old. His horrifying preferences would continue, and when Camargo was arrested in February of 1986, he was carrying the bloody clothes of the eight-year-old girl who would be his last victim. Perhaps even more shockingly, those waiting to hear what his sentence would be were expecting him to get the longest prison term Ecuador would allow — just 16 years.

While he was given the 16-year sentence, he served only six of it. In spite of being put under constant surveillance, he was killed by another inmate at the Guayaquil jail on November 13, 1994.

In 1963, Macleans did a deep dive into the life of Leopold Dion. They found that surprisingly, there was something more tragic than the story of a serial killer taking the lives of children — that was the story of a serial killer who had already been tried and convicted of crimes including rape and "gross indecency" with a minor, but who had been paroled multiple times before going on to kill.

Dion's first conviction was in 1940 (although he had been acquitted of an attempted murder charge three years prior), and he served 16 years before being released on parole. He hadn't finished the terms of that parole when he found himself back behind bars but was released again. That was when he twice abducted two boys at a time, taking them to remote locations and strangling them.

Dion had made plans to kill three others but found himself behind bars again — this time, charged with four murders that would potentially result in a death sentence. He was still being held in the Archambault federal prison in late 1972, though — and that's when The Windsor Star reported that he had been killed by another inmate named Normand Champagne. Champagne — who was convinced that he was the reincarnated Lawrence of Arabia — was acquitted after entering an insanity defense.

In 1968, Gaffney, South Carolina, was struggling with the terror of knowing they had a serial killer in their midst — four women were killed over 10 days by the so-called Gaffney Strangler. Things kicked off, says the Spartanburg Herald-Journal, when the editor of a local paper received an anonymous call from the killer himself on February 8, directing law enforcement to the remains of two missing girls. The community was on high alert, and after two vigilant locals recalled seeing Lee Roy Martin near the location where another body was discovered, he was arrested eight days later.

Martin was found guilty and given four life terms, but he only spent a few years behind bars. He was killed in 1972, and according to The Gaffney Ledger, he died almost instantly when he was stabbed multiple times by fellow inmate Kenneth Marshall Rumsey. Rumsey was, in turn, charged and convicted of that murder, but served only five more years in prison before committing suicide.

As far as serial killers go, History says that Charles Schmid was the whole package. A pathological liar with a Napoleon complex, Schmid started killing teenage girls simply because he wanted to — and thanks to help from two friends, he was right about being able to get away with his first murder, that of 15-year-old Alleen Rowe. Then, he just kept right on killing. The next to die were a pair of sisters, and bizarrely, part of Schmid's deal was that he liked to brag — so, he recruited help to bury them. The body count soon rose again, and it was finally the friend who had helped him bury the sisters in the Arizona desert who turned him in.

Schmid became known as the Pied Piper of Tucson, for his popularity among the area's teens, says MEL. His 10-day-long death started on March 20, 1975, when he was stabbed repeatedly by two other inmates who reportedly thought he was doing the sort of in-house snitching that was bound to get someone killed.

Now missing an eye and suffering from punctured intestines and lungs, University of Arizona English professor Richard Shelton — who Schmid had reached out to in hopes of getting a poetry critique — waited at his side as he died, later recalling, "It was pretty grizzly because they kept coming and asking if they could remove certain things, like an eye or a kidney. And they let him go, piece by piece."

When it comes time to list the world's most famous serial killers, Jeffrey Dahmer is definitely up there at the top of the list. He's also on the list of serial killers who were murdered in prison, well before they served their full sentence.

Dahmer's fame comes in part because of the sheer shock value of the things found in his apartment: When police intervened as would-be victim Tracy Edwards fled Dahmer's apartment, it kicked off an investigation that would turn up things like a 57-gallon drum filled with body parts and a fridge/freezer with a few human heads (via History). By the time the dust settled amid his 1991 capture, Dahmer admitted to killing 17 people, starting in 1978. He was given a sentence of 15 life terms, but he would only last a few years in prison.

Dahmer was killed by fellow inmate Christopher Scarver, who later said (via CNN) just why he'd done it. Dahmer, it seemed, had enjoyed his reputation as a cannibal, and was a huge fan of fashioning his prison food into body parts — then joking about how he liked to bite. Scarver had confronted Dahmer with a newspaper clipping about his crimes, and when he asked him if he was really guilty and he confirmed that he was, Scarver killed him with two blows from a weight room bar. His last words were reportedly: "I don't care if I live or die. Go ahead and kill me."