Famous Serial Killers Who Are Tauruses

According to the fashion magazine Allure, Tauruses live for pleasure, comfort, luxury, and being pampered. Sure, they can be a bit stubborn — but that's just another side of their dependable and hard-working nature. Members of this epicurean sign supposedly love neck caresses, long baths, and saving money. 

But apparently, some of them also love killing. In fact, notorious serial killers tend to be Tauruses more than any other astrological sign, according to the thriller novelist David Jester, who made an amateur study of the topic (via The Mirror).

Who are these bullish bullies, who share both a propensity for homicide and a birthdate between April 20 and May 20? The blood-soaked crew includes the man thought to be America's first serial killer, several female killers, and a man given the moniker of "the Werewolf of Wisteria." And believe it or not, their traits are more Taurean than you'd expect.

Born May 16 in New Hampshire, H.H. Holmes, born Herman Mudgett, is widely believed to be the first known serial killer in the United States (via Britannica). Holmes reportedly was fascinated with medicine from a young age, with accounts claiming that as a child he used to kidnap animals and perform "surgery" on them. The cunning fraud later went to medical school, where he did poorly, and went by the name Dr. H.H. Holmes to take a position as a pharmacist in Chicago.

At this point, Holmes's notorious murder spree began. He built himself an odd residence (later known as the "Murder Castle"), complete with features designed to kill his victims discretely: soundproof rooms, doors with locks on the outside, gas vents for quick asphyxiation, and even a crematorium. The devilish doctor's apparent motive was greed: he made his employees name him as the beneficiary in their life insurance plans, and would get engaged to women only to kill them after he had secured their money.

Holmes confessed to as many as 130 murders, but some experts believe his body count may be as high as 200, making him not just America's first serial killer, but one of its most prolific. His Taurean traits: a love of wealth, a way with women, and the vision to build a comfortable murder castle.

Tauruses "have very strong feelings" when they fall in love, according to the astrology app Co-Star, and they're often unwilling to leave romances. Perhaps this explains why several Taurean serial killers murdered alongside their husbands: they just loved too much.

Take Karla Homolka, who met her future husband, Paul Bernardo, at a pet convention, according to the Washington, D.C. Crime Museum. As the two began dating, Bernardo shared with Homolka that he had a sexual fetish for raping women, and the two began drugging and raping women together. One of their victims was Homolka's own sister, who, while drugged with an anesthetic stolen from the vet clinic where Homolka worked, choked on vomit and died. Even after this, Homolka continued to kidnap victims for her and Bernardo to rape, and sometimes kill.

There's also Martha Beck, one-half of the so-called "Lonely Hearts Killers." Beck joined a "lonely hearts" club advertised in a magazine and began corresponding with Raymond Martinez (via History). Martinez was using the club to seduce women and steal their money, but he ended up falling in love with Beck, who approved of his scheme. The two began posing as brother and sister as they conned older women out of their money, sometimes killing them in the process. The pair were executed in New York's Sing Sing Prison in 1951.

Born May 19, 1870, Albert Fish attracted a large number of nicknames over his nefarious lifetime: the Brooklyn Vampire, the Werewolf of Wysteria, the Gray Man, the Moon Maniac (via All That's Interesting and History). The Taurean also attracted a large number of victims, or so he said — though he was only convicted for the murder of 10-year-old Grace Budd, he claimed to be responsible for the death of dozens of other children. It's generally believed that he had at least three to 10 victims.

Typical of Tauruses, Fish loved food. More specifically, Fish loved eating his victims. After killing Budd, he prepared a stew with her remains that he commenced to eat over the next nine days — or at least this is what he alleged, in a letter he sent to her mother.

Right before Fish was executed by authorities in 1936, he claimed to be delighted by the prospect. "It will be the supreme thrill," he reportedly said, "the only one I haven't tried."