14 Black Serial Killers Who Reigned Terror on America

The wife of Reverend William M. Elder was not only responsible for his death but also the death of two of his children whom she poisoned with her cooking. She was charged for their murders but during her trial, it was found that her killings didn’t stop at her household. She was accused of killing up to 13 people including two ex-husbands, three of her own children, a grandson, a cousin and her own mother. She was sentenced to life in prison.

Brown and Alton Coleman began their killing spree when they lured two young girls into the woods in 1984. One of the girls was raped and the other was suffocated and stomped. For the next 50 days, the two killed eight more people, raped seven and kidnapped three. The couple was sentenced to death and Coleman was executed in 2002. However, Brown’s death sentence was overturned after the attorney general attributed her actions to a mental disability, per Indy Star.

Little is known as the most prolific serial killer not just because of his crimes but because he confessed to a large number of unsolved murders just two years before he died. Little had been killing since the 50s but was sentenced for good in 2014 for killing three women in the 80s. His DNA was then connected to another string of strangulations. In an interview with a Texas Ranger, he confessed to unsolved killings in over a dozen states bringing the total up to 93 people dead.

Wallace, also known as the “Taco Bell Strangler,” raped and murdered 11 Black women in the span of four years in the 90s. Most of the victims were women he knew such as friends and co-workers at the Taco Bell he managed in Charlotte, NC. Ol boy even attended some of their funerals. It wasn’t until Wallace killed two women back-to-back in the same building that the police were onto him. He was arrested in 1994 and sentenced to death.

Over a span of 11 years, Turner killed 10 women in Los Angeles. He was sentenced to 10 counts of second-degree murder and the superior court judge said the evidence showed Turner would strangle each woman to death for his own sexual pleasure, a nature of cruelty rarely seen in murder trials. By 2014, he was sentenced to death after being found guilty in the killings of an additional four women, per Los Angeles Daily News.

Durousseau was a cab driver in Jacksonville when he raped and killed a 26-year-old woman. Following her death, Durousseau took the lives of six other women all under the age of 25. He was finally arrested in 2003 on five counts of murder but DNA linked him to his first killing, upgrading his punishment to the death sentence. In 2021, he had his death penalty conviction overthrown to serve life in prison instead, per News4Jax.

Price grew up in a predominantly white neighborhood during the heat of the civil rights movement. Despite having a relatively happy childhood, Craig started experiencing dark thoughts about murder and by the time he turned 13, he had a hefty criminal record including robbery, stalking and assault. Soon, he killed a white woman from his neighborhood. The case went cold until police found he later killed another white woman and her two daughters. He willingly confessed to the murders and was convicted as a minor. His sentence was supposed to have ended in 2017 but his repeated crimes inside prison extended his stay, per WJAR. He goes down in US history as once of the youngest serial killers.

In the 70s, a group of young Black men embarked on a killing spree, taking the lives of up to 15 people. Their crimes led to a stop-and-search program to be issued in San Francisco which was widely criticized by Black civil rights leaders as another ploy to harass innocent Black people. However, by 1974, seven Black men were arrested. Three of them got off on bail but the remaining four were convicted on a slew of charges including murder and kidnapping, and sentenced to life in prison.

Dubbed by the press as the “Sunday Morning Slasher,” Watts was assumed to be experiencing delusion after being diagnosed with Meningitis. When he was younger, he used to hunt rabbits and stalk his female classmates, then he committed his first murder at 15 years old. According to AP, he killed for a span of eight years claiming the lives of 14 to 100 women. He was hard to catch because police couldn’t find a pattern in how he killed. Then, in 1981, one of his victims faked being unconscious and escaped from him, alerting the police. In Texas, he was charged as a non-violent felon after pleading guilty to burglary with intention to kill. However, a witness from Michigan came forward with a testimony sending him to life in prison.

In 1981, Williams was arrested for the murders of two adult men. However, during his trial, prosecutors suggested he was also behind a string of 22 murders of children in Atlanta. Though he maintained his innocence, forensic evidence from his home and vehicle connected him to several victims. He was sentenced to life in prison, though many people still believe he is innocent.

The “Grim Sleeper” was known to target young Black women who struggled with drug addiction. Franklin was found guilty of killing nine women and one teenager in 2016 and sentenced to death. His killing spree lasted from 1984, all the way to 2007 ; he kept souvenirs from his victims including their jewelry or pictures of them. He was finally arrested in 2010; prosecutors speculated he may have been behind even more murders. Before his execution date, he died in 2020 in his prison cell, per People.

Though he was only convicted in the murder of two women, Lee was tied to at least six other murders in Louisiana between 1998 and 2003. Prosecutors say he murdered to satisfy a sexual gratification he craved. In 2003, he was sentenced to life in prison for one murder but in 2004, his sentenced was enhanced to the death penalty after being found guilty in another murder.

The “Baseline Killer” killing spree began in August of 2005, per ABC News. Within one year, he was believed to kill nine people as well as commit a string of rapes and assaults. The women of Phoenix were running to self-defense classes and buying firearms for protection. By September of 2006, he was arrested and charges with 94 crimes, including but not excluded to the murders. He had two trials as the public debated on whether he was the killer in question. Right now, he sits on death row.

The entire time, his wife, Carr, stood by him and proclaimed his innocence. “The police have manipulated the media. They’ve said horrible things about Mark. People want to believe that they have the right guy,” Carr said to GMA.

Sowell served 15 years in prison in a rape and was released in the early 2000s. However, in 2009, investigators who suspected him of another rape found the decomposing bodies of two women on the third floor of his house and a grave dug in the basement. Sowell had a total of 10 dead bodies rotting in his home, all of which were vulnerable young women who struggled with drug addiction. Victims who escaped tried to tell the police but some didn’t believe their reports.

Sowell was sentenced to death in 2011 but died in 2021 of an unspecified illness, per Cleveland.com.