List of well-known serial murder cases

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Published: November 4, 2009

Anthony Sowell of Cleveland has been charged with five counts of aggravated murder. Authorities said Wednesday they have confirmed a total of at least 11 victims whose remains were found at his home.

Here is a list of well-known serial murder cases in the U.S.

— Donald Harvey, a former nurse's aide, pleaded guilty to 37 murders in Ohio and Kentucky; serving life in prison. Most were killings in hospitals where he worked, primarily in 1986 and 1987.

— John Wayne Gacy Jr., on death row in Illinois, was convicted in 1980 of killing 33 young men and boys from 1972 to 1978. Twenty-seven bodies were found buried in the crawl space under his suburban Chicago home.

— Patrick Wayne Kearney confessed in 1977 to killing 32 men. Dismembered remains of many of the men were dumped in trash bags along Southern California highways. He was convicted of 21 of the so-called "trash bag" murders and was sentenced to life.

— Jeffrey L. Dahmer, a former candy factory worker, confessed to killing and dismembering men and boys between 1978 and his arrest in 1991. He was serving multiple life terms when another prison inmate beat him and another convicted murderer to death in 1994.

— Robert Hansen, an Anchorage, Alaska, baker, admitted killing 17 women, mostly dancers and prostitutes, from the mid-1970s to 1984. He is serving 461 years in prison.

— William Bonin, known as the "Freeway Killer," was convicted of murdering 14 boys and young men after having sex with them and robbing them. He abandoned their bodies near freeways in Southern California in 1979 and 1980.

— Arthur J. Shawcross, convicted in the deaths of 11 women in the Rochester, N.Y., area, was sentenced to 250 years in prison in 1991.

— Postal worker David Berkowitz, aka "Son of Sam," committed six murders in New York City. He was arrested in August 1977 and sentenced in 1978 to six life sentences in prison.

SOURCE: AP Research.