American murderers of children

Theresa_Knorr

Theresa Jimmie Francine Knorr (née Cross; born March 14, 1946) is an American woman convicted of torturing and murdering two of her six children while using the others to facilitate and cover up her crimes. She was acquitted of murdering her first husband and was also considered a suspect in the unsolved murder of her sister. She is currently serving two consecutive life sentences at the California Institution for Women in Chino, California.

Raymond_Fernandez_and_Martha_Beck

Raymond Martinez Fernandez (December 17, 1914 – March 8, 1951) and Martha Jule Beck (May 6, 1920 – March 8, 1951) were an American serial killer couple. They were convicted of one murder, are known to have committed two more, and were suspected of having killed up to twenty victims during a spree between 1947 and 1949.
After their arrest and trial for serial murder in 1949, Fernandez and Beck became known as the Lonely Hearts Killers for meeting their unsuspecting victims through personal ads, posted in newspaper lonely hearts columns. A number of films and television shows are based on this case.

Ronald_Clark_O'Bryan

Ronald Clark O'Bryan (October 19, 1944 – March 31, 1984), nicknamed The Candy Man and The Man Who Killed Halloween, was an American man convicted of killing his eight-year-old son Timothy (April 5, 1966 – October 31, 1974) on Halloween 1974 with a potassium cyanide-laced Pixy Stix that was ostensibly collected during a trick or treat outing. O'Bryan poisoned his son in order to claim life insurance money to ease his own financial troubles, as he was $100,000 in debt. O'Bryan also distributed poisoned candy to his daughter and three other children in an attempt to cover up his crime; however, neither his daughter nor the other children ate the poisoned candy. He was convicted of capital murder in June 1975 and sentenced to death. He was executed by lethal injection in March 1984.

Douglas_Wright_(murderer)

Douglas Franklin Wright (March 25, 1940 – September 6, 1996) was an American serial killer who murdered at least seven people between 1969 and 1991. He was sentenced to death for three of these murders and was executed in 1996 at the Oregon State Penitentiary, becoming the first person to be executed in Oregon since 1962. He was also the first person executed in Oregon by lethal injection.

Robert_Anthony_Buell

Robert Anthony Buell (September 10, 1940 – September 25, 2002) was an American serial killer, child murderer, serial rapist, and former planning department worker from Akron, Ohio. He was convicted of the July 17, 1982 murder of 11-year-old Krista Lea Harrison.Buell was executed by lethal injection on September 25, 2002. His final meal was a single black unpitted olive. In 2010, eight years after his death, he was found to have also killed Tina Marie Harmon.

Jeremy_Strohmeyer

Jeremy Strohmeyer (born October 11, 1978) is an American convicted murderer, serving four consecutive life terms for the sexual assault and murder of 7-year-old Sherrice Iverson (October 20, 1989 – May 25, 1997) at Primadonna Resort and Casino in Primm, Nevada, on May 25, 1997.
The case drew national attention by focusing on the safety of children in casinos and on the revelation that Strohmeyer's friend, David Cash Jr., said he saw the crime in progress but did not stop it.

Patrick_Kearney

Patrick Wayne Kearney (born September 24, 1939), also known as The Trash Bag Killer and The Freeway Killer, is an American serial killer and necrophile who murdered a minimum of twenty-one young men and boys throughout southern California between 1962 and 1977.

Perry_Smith_(murderer)

Perry Edward Smith (October 27, 1928 – April 14, 1965) was one of two career criminals convicted of murdering the four members of the Clutter family in Holcomb, Kansas, United States, on November 15, 1959, a crime that was made famous by Truman Capote in his 1966 non-fiction novel In Cold Blood. Along with Richard Hickock, Smith took part in the burglary and multiple murder at the Clutter family farmhouse.

Herbert_Mullin

Herbert William Mullin (April 18, 1947 – August 18, 2022) was an American serial killer who killed 13 people in California in the early 1970s. He confessed to the killings, which he claimed prevented earthquakes. In 1973, after a trial to determine whether he was legally insane or culpable, he was convicted of two murders in the first-degree and nine in the second-degree, and sentenced to life imprisonment. During his imprisonment, he was denied parole eight times.Mullin and Edmund Kemper overlapped in their 1972 to 1973 murder sprees, adding confusion to the police investigations and ending with both being arrested, within a few weeks of each other, after the deaths of 21 people.