Some Of The Most Famous Serial Killers Who Were Libras

Content warning: The following article contains mentions of violence, suicide, sexual abuse, and child abuse. 

Serial killers are arguably the most terrifying people walking the Earth. They stalk, maim, and murder people to satisfy their own selfish needs, often preying on people who are already in precarious positions. Still, inhuman as their actions may seem, even they start out as babies who are born in this world the same way as everyone. This, of course, means that they all have a birth date, which in turn provides them with a horoscope sign. 

Horoscopes might not be the best possible way to analyze people, but if you read up on serial killers, you may notice that some of the creepiest serial killers in history have born under certain star signs. One of these signs is Libra, and as you're about to find out, some very, very scary people have born between September 23 and October 22. Here's a look at some of the most infamous Libra serial killers. 

One of the most brutal serial killers of the Soviet Union and perhaps the world at large was Andrei Chikatilo. Chikatilo, born on October 165, 1936, was known by many names during his killing career, including the "Butcher of Rostov," "The Red Ripper," and "Citizen X," as per Biography. Chikatilo grew up in a poor household and was bullied as a child. 

As ThoughtCo details, in his early 40s, Chikatilo began his killing spree, often sexually abusing his victims and mutilating their bodies. He was fueled by self-pity, because of his rough childhood and impotency. By the time he was captured in 1990, he had killed over 50 victims, most of them children; this doesn't include the man falsely convicted and executed for his first murder. Chikatilo was later sentenced to death by shooting.

A childhood full of homelessness and abuse twisted Pedro Alonso Lopez (born October 8, 1948, per Biography) into a man who became known as the "Monster of the Andes." Lopez targeted young girls, strangling and burying them after abusing them (per 9News). "I walked among the markets searching for a girl with a certain look on her face. A look of innocence and beauty," he said in 1994. "She would be a good girl, always working with her mother. I followed them, sometimes for two or three days, waiting for the moment when she was left alone."

Operating in Ecuador, Peru, and his native Colombia in the 1970s, Lopez was such a prolific killer that there are only rough estimations of his body count. He was convicted for 110 murders in 1980, but some sources estimate that his potential number of victims could be as high as 350, as many disappearances from the areas he operated in were attributed to other reasons.

The Monster's trail of death came to an end after a flood uncovered some of his victims. After Lopez was arrested, an undercover officer lured him to confess a number of his crimes — but chillingly, his story didn't end there. He was sentenced in Ecuador, where the maximum sentence at the time was 16 years. After 14 years, he was deported to Colombia, where he was declared insane. Just three years later, in 1998, he was deemed sane and released from a mental facility ... and hasn't been seen since.  

Fred West didn't commit his crimes alone. Per Biography, the serial killer worked with his partner, Rose West, as they subjected a number of women to gory torture and abuse, murdering many of the victims. They didn't just target strangers, either. Their victims included Fred's first wife, and they brutally abused their daughters on a regular basis, even killing one (via the BBC). 

Fred was involved in a number of crimes and abuse cases even before he started his murders with Rose. His dangerous nature was all the more chilling because of his work history, which included driving an ice cream van and working at a slaughterhouse. Before joining forces with Rose, he'd already murdered a pregnant lover. 

Fred was born on September 29, 1941, and his behavior reportedly changed in a dramatic fashion after he received multiple head injuries in his youth. He committed his crimes between 1967 and 1987, burying many of the victims in his house's garden and basement, where the couple had built a torture chamber. 

After several close calls with the law, the Wests' luck ran out in 1994 when dismembered bodies were found buried on their property, and Fred started cooperating with the police. The true number of their victims is still somewhat unclear, and Fred West was never officially convicted for the 12 murders he was charged with, as he killed himself ahead of the trial in 1995. 

Born on October 14, 1953, Bobby Joe Long was a bad apple who started his criminal career as a serial rapist but became a serial killer in 1984 (via Biography). He was executed in 2019, with two of his living victims witnessing the event (per CNN). 

Long's personal history was extremely turbulent. He had a very difficult mother-son relationship, and after a bad traffic accident, he became increasingly physically and mentally abusive toward women. His wife divorced him in 1980, after which he became a full-blown sex offender who located his victims by seeking out classified ads and houses that were on sale, and entered homes under the guise of a prospective buyer. This earned Long the moniker "Classified Ad Rapist."

After over 50 sexual assaults using these tactics, Long started murdering his victims. He killed at least 10 women, but fortunately, a victim called Lisa McVey was able to convince him to spare her life — though not before he'd kept her captive for over a day. McVey was ultimately able to describe her assailant to the police, and Long's reign of terror finally ended when he was caught on November 16, 1984.  

Angelo Buono Jr. was known as "The Hillside Strangler" for a very fitting reason. Buono killed women in the late 1970s (via The Washington Post). After strangling his victims, he then meticulously cleaned up the bodies and left them prominently displayed at various hillside locations. The crimes took place in Los Angeles at a time when the area was infamous for its abundance of serial killers, notes the Los Angeles Times. The victims didn't seem to have any discernable pattern beyond the fact that they were women, so the Strangler caused considerable concern in the city, as well as a massive manhunt by law enforcement. 

Curiously, Buono wasn't the only Hillside Strangler, as he worked in tandem with his cousin, Kenneth Bianchi. They lured their victims in by posing as police officers, before brutally assaulting and torturing them in various ways until they killed them. 

Buono was ultimately captured when Bianchi was arrested for a very Hillside Strangler-like solo crime in Washington State and decided to give his murderous relative up to the police. Buono, who was born on October 5, 1934 (via Investigation Discovery), committed at least 9 murders and was sentenced to life in prison in 1983. He died in his cell in 2002.

In 1991, nurse Beverley Allitt started abusing her position by attacking 13 children at a pediatric ward in Grantham, United Kingdom (per the BBC). Allitt reportedly had Munchausen Syndrome by proxy, which had caused her to self-harm for attention in the past, and now escalated to murder. 

According to The Guardian, Allitt gave lethal insulin overdoses to four of the children, and six of her victims were badly injured. Because of these crimes, the serial killer nurse became known as "The Angel of Death" and received 13 life sentences in 1994. Per The Independent, her case prompted discussion and investigation of the country's healthcare system, since there were several red flags speaking against her employment as a nurse, which should have been noticed during the vetting process.

Allitt, who was born on October 4, 1968 (per "Serial Killers: Murder without Mercy" by Nigel Blundell) has continued to make sporadic headlines after her sentence. In December 2022, The Mirror reported that her father still believed that she was innocent of the crimes and had left her a special trust fund worth £10,000 (over $12,000 in 2023) as inheritance. 

Lawrence Bittaker was born on September 27, 1940 (via "Serial Killers Encyclopedia" by Jacqueline Cross and R. J. Parker), and he died in prison in 2019, per Reuters. Since his teens, Bittaker was a petty criminal who was in and out of jail, but it wasn't until he met Roy Norris around 1977 when he became a true terror. The pair are known as the Tool-Box Killers for their preferred modus operandi, which involved torturing their victims with various repair implements, such as pliers. They targeted hitchhikers, whom they then took to a secure location to assault, torment, and kill.

According to Newsweek, the two murderers killed five teen girls in 1979, two of whom have never been found. Fortunately, they were caught later that same year, thanks to information provided by one survivor. Norris agreed to testify against Bittaker, who was sentenced to death in 1981 but remained on the death row for the rest of his life. 

Charlene Gallego, née Williams (born on October 19, 1956, per "Serial Killer Couples" by R. Barri Flowers), and her husband Gerald Gallego are a particularly ruthless chapter in serial killer history. Gerald was already a seasoned criminal when he met Charlene in 1977, and the couple's whirlwind romance became a two-year murder spree that started in 1978. The Gallegos specialized in abducting young women for sexual purposes and were extremely dangerous. They killed 10 of their victims, and their crimes were reaching fever pitch just as they were caught in 1980. According to CBS News Sacramento, their crimes became known as Sex Slave Murders.

As History notes, the pair are both considered serial killers, but their fates were very different. While Gerald was sentenced to death, Charlene struck up a plea deal and testified against her husband. She was released from prison in 1997 and started a new life under a different name. In 2013, she gave CBS News Sacramento an interview where she pinned the murders entirely on Gerald. "He is just one sick b******, he was," she said. "I would've done anything I could if I could've stopped him. I know I couldn't have stopped him; I tried to stop him."

According to "Serial Killers Encyclopedia," Patrick Wayne Kearney (born September 24, 1939) was a normal-seeming, if shy, aeronautics engineer who had a long but rather turbulent relationship with lover David Douglas Hill. Unbeknownst to everyone else, Kearney lived a double life as a serial killer. Whenever he and Hill were temporarily on the outs, he headed out to commit terrifying crimes. He liked to drive around and pick up hitchhikers, shooting them inside his car and driving them to secluded locations, where he molested and abused their dead bodies. Finally, he dumped the victims' remains in trash bags, which gave him the dual monikers "Trash Bag Killer" and "Freeway Killer" (via "Through the Eyes of Serial Killers" by Nadia Fezzani). Per The New York Times, the youngest of Kearney's victims was just 5 years old. 

In 1978, Kearney confessed to 28 deaths around Southern California, per UPI (via Times Daily), and agreed to play ball in order to avoid the death sentence. He was sentenced for 21 of the murders, receiving an equal number of life sentences, according to "Angel of Death" by Dennis McDougal. However, it's very difficult to determine how many victims the Trash Bag Killer actually had, and the true number might be even higher.

Jeanne Weber was born in Paimpol, France, on October 2, 1874, per "Angels of Death" by Al Cimino. As she grew up, she moved to Paris and started working odd jobs that included nannying. 

Over the years, three of Weber's children died suddenly, which was attributed to her and her husband's alcohol abuse, believed to weaken children. Per "The World Encyclopedia of Serial Killers" by Susan Hall, the children she was taking care of in various households started mysteriously dying, too. Strange bruises were found around the infants' necks, but consequences eluded Weber ... until April 1905, when her relatives caught the murderer in the act of killing her young nephew, who fortunately survived. 

In the ensuing trial, Weber was found not guilty after experts failed to provide conclusive evidence that she'd killed any of the children. The woman who became known as "The Ogress of the Goutte d'Or" became a divisive figure, and her supporters allowed her to continue working ... despite more child deaths and close calls, recurring troubles with the law, and even a verbal confession to authorities. In 1908, she was again caught in the act, this time having managed to kill her victim. This time, she had no defenders. Weber was sent to a mental health facility, where she died in 1918. She'd murdered at least 10 children.

On September 16, 2002, an article in medical trade journal The BMJ published a chilling tale about a New York doctor who'd been sentenced to life in prison for murdering his patients. The doctor was Michael Swango (born October 21, 1954, per "Doctors Who Killed"), and his patients started mysteriously dying when he was still a medical student. Unfortunately, reports of various incidents involving him were dismissed (via Columbus Monthly), and he became a practicing doctor. 

Patients weren't the only people Swango directed his lethal machinations against. In 1984, while working as a paramedic, he actually tinkered with poisons in his house and used his creations on his colleagues. No one died, but Swango spent two years in prison and lost his license. 

However, Swango was a handsome and charismatic man (via Mitchell Republic), and just like he managed to acquire his license despite the shady events surrounding him, he now swindled his way to doctor work with forged documents and tactical relocations — at one point, he worked in Zimbabwe and tried to work in Saudi Arabia. However, his fraudulent past caught up with him when he briefly returned to the United States in 1997. He was promptly arrested by authorities, and before he was released from prison, the authorities charged him with three murders. These eventually earned him a life sentence each. However, over the years, Swango's poisoning ways have been connected to up to 60 deaths.