The Most Notorious Criminals in Every State

Alabama: Joseph Dewey Akin

Nurse Joseph Dewey Akin stands out because his job was supposed to be saving lives, not taking them. But that’s what authorities believe he spent his career doing: Over a 10-year period while working at about 20 different health-care facilities, Akin is suspected of having ended the lives of 100 people, including a quadriplegic he pleaded guilty to killing with a lethal dose of lidocaine.

Alaska: Israel Keyes

Per capita, Alaska has more serial killers than any other state. Some experts point to the long, dreary winters as a factor, though what made Israel Keyes tick is anyone’s guess. One of his more hideous acts was kidnapping and murdering a young woman in Anchorage, then hiding her body, going on a cruise and, upon returning, convincing the woman’s family to pay a ransom for their daughter. He eventually confessed to murdering five others. Keyes took his own life in a jail cell while awaiting trial.

Arizona: Jodi Arias

Thanks to the intense news coverage of the 2013 trial of Jodi Arias over the 2008 murder of former boyfriend Travis Alexander, Arias is arguably a more notorious criminal than even Jared Lee Loughner, who killed six and injured 13 in his assassination attempt on Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords in Tucson in 2011. Arias spent a shocking 18 consecutive days testifying on her own behalf, attempting to resolve several years’ worth of conflicting stories she’d told about what really happened to Alexander, ultimately claiming—unsuccessfully—that she killed him in “self-defense.”

Arkansas: Andrew Golden and Mitchell Johnson

Andrew Golden and Mitchell Johnson aren’t the first or most prolific school shooters—but they are the only living U.S. mass shooters who are not currently incarcerated. When they killed five people in 1998, in what was then the second-deadliest U.S. school shooting, Golden was 11 and Johnson was 13. They were released from prison on their 21st birthdays, and they remain Arkansas’s most notorious criminals.

California: Charles Manson

California has its share of infamous criminals, but none as notable as Charles Manson, the cult leader whose followers carried out a murder spree in Hollywood in the late 1960s that took the lives of at least nine people, including the actress Sharon Tate and her unborn child. In 1971, Manson and three of his followers—Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel and Leslie Van Houten—were convicted of the murders of seven people and sentenced to the death penalty, which was commuted to life in prison the following year. The Cincinnati-born career criminal died in 2017.

Colorado: Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris

The deadly 1999 school shooting at Columbine High School made the two teens at its center, Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, Colorado’s most notorious criminals. With only two weeks left before they were to graduate from high school, Klebold and Harris executed a killing spree they’d been planning for more than a year. Their motive was revenge on people they accused of bullying them. They killed 12 students and one teacher before taking their own lives.

Connecticut: Adam Lanza

In one of the most despicable acts imaginable, Adam Lanza murdered 20 first-graders and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown in December of 2012, before shooting himself. He had killed his mother, Nancy, the morning of the shooting before taking her car and driving five miles to Sandy Hook, where he also shot two teachers who survived. Lanza fired 154 rounds in five minutes.

Delaware: Steven Brian Pennell

Steven Brian Pennell, also known as the Route 40 Killer, is Delaware’s first serial killer. For a period of one year, from November 1987 to his November 1988 arrest, Pennell beat, tortured and murdered five women. When he was executed in 1992 for committing three murders, it was the first execution in Delaware since 1976 (the year the death penalty was reinstated). Those close to the case still can’t figure out why this young married man with two children would have hunted women on a lonely stretch of highway.

Florida: Aileen Wuornos

Serial killer Aileen Wuornos—also known as the “Damsel of Death”—was found guilty of murdering six men from 1989 to 1990. Wuornos was a tragic case: She was abused as a child, abandoned and later made a living as a sex worker along Florida’s highways. Wuornos was executed by lethal injection in Florida in 2002 at the age of 46, and in 2003, her story was made into the film Monster, starring Charlize Theron.

Georgia: Paul John Knowles

The so-called “Casanova Killer,” Paul John Knowles exploited his good looks and charm to ingratiate himself with his victims. He claims to have killed up to 35 people; authorities have tied him to at least 18 murders. Born in Florida in 1946, he made his way to Georgia in 1974 and began his spree, killing mostly women—many of whom invited him into their homes. Thriving on attention, Knowles idolized the outlaws Bonnie and Clyde, and like them, was shot to death by law enforcement.

Hawaii: Bryan Koji Uyesugi

In 1999, Bryan Koji Uyesugi, a Xerox technician, shot up a Xerox Engineering Systems office in Honolulu, killing seven people before fleeing in a van and being tracked down by police. According to police, Uyesugi was the registered owner of 17 guns, including the 9mm handgun he used in the shooting. This was the worst mass murder in Hawaii’s history, and it drew attention to violence in the workplace. In August 2000, he was sentenced to life in prison without parole.

Idaho: James Edward Wood

In 1993, James Edward Wood was convicted and sentenced to death for the kidnapping and murder of Jeralee Underwood, an 11-year-old newspaper delivery girl from Idaho. But his crimes don’t end there. He is also credited with at least 85 rapes, 185 robberies and dozens of murders. In 2004, Wood died of a heart attack in the Idaho Maximum Security Institution while on death row.

Illinois: James Earl Ray

James Earl Ray, the small-time criminal turned assassin of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., was born in Alton in 1928. Many believe that Ray, who plotted the assassination for several months before executing it on April 4, 1968, was motivated by segregationist sentiments, though he apparently thought he could make money by targeting black civil rights leaders. Ray was apprehended in Brushy Mountain, Tennessee, on June 13, 1977, where he was found hiding beneath some leaves in a wooded area. He died in prison in 1998.

Indiana: John Dillinger

John Herbert Dillinger Jr. had an illustrious criminal career. He was a bank robber, auto thief and fugitive who captured the nation’s imagination until the FBI caught up with him. Born in 1903 in Indianapolis, Dillinger terrorized the Midwest, including killing a member of law enforcement before he went down in a hail of bullets on July 22, 1934. In addition to his prolific list of crimes, what makes Dillinger even more infamous is the fact that he was idolized by many downtrodden Americans during the Depression as a Robin Hood–like figure.

Iowa: Robert Ben Rhoades

Known as the Truckstop Killer, Robert Ben Rhoades converted the sleeper cab in his semi truck into a torture chamber. Authorities believe the Council Bluffs native may have been responsible for the rape and murder of more than 50 women, though they’ve only confirmed three victims. Rhoades was caught when a police officer approached his truck, parked on the side of the road with the hazard lights on. Inside, a handcuffed nude woman was screaming for help. He’s currently serving a life sentence.

Kansas: Dennis Rader

Dennis Rader will forever be remembered as the BTK Killer (bind, torture, kill), who murdered at least 10 people in the Wichita area from the mid-1970s through 1991. A Kansas native, Rader appeared to be a family man and a hard worker, but his zest for leaving clues to taunt authorities led to his capture and conviction. His story inspired Stephen King‘s A Good Marriage, which became a 2014 film starring Anthony LaPaglia and Joan Allen.

Kentucky: Donald Harvey

Kentucky is where Donald Harvey got his start in 1970 as a prolific “angel of death”: During a 10-month period, he killed at least 12 patients while working as an orderly at Marymount Hospital in London, Kentucky. Harvey claimed to have murdered 87 people all told. He managed to keep his crimes hidden for nearly two decades before finally being arrested and convicted in 1987. He died in prison in 2017.

Louisiana: Bonnie and Clyde

Louisiana has its share of notorious criminals, but it also happens to be where crazed lovers, robbers and killers Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow met their demise in 1934 after one of the most extensive manhunts in American history. At the time, they were wanted for at least 13 killings—three of whom were law enforcement officers. The gunfight that ended their Depression-era reign of terror lasted a mere 12 seconds, but the nation’s romanticizing of them has never really ended. They’re the subject of numerous books, movies and popular songs.

Maine: James Purrington

His name may bring to mind a harmless cat, but don’t be fooled: Captain James Purrington (sometimes spelled Purrinton) killed his wife, seven of his eight children (he left the eighth for dead, but the 17-year-old boy survived) and himself on a summer morning in 1806 at their home in Bowdoinham. He was buried along with the murder weapons, an axe and a razor. It’s believed he was struggling with mental illness.

Maryland: John Wilkes Booth

His name will live in infamy: John Wilkes Booth, a native of Maryland, assassinated President Abraham Lincoln on April 14, 1865, while the president was at Washington, D.C.’s Ford Theater, watching the play “Our American Cousin.” The theater was a fitting setting because Booth was an acclaimed Shakespearean actor himself. Booth didn’t act alone, but it was his bullet that ended Lincoln’s life as he yelled out, “Sic semper tyrannis! [Thus always to tyrants!] The South is avenged.” Booth was killed on April 26, 1865, on a farm in Port Royal, Virginia.

Massachusetts: Whitey Bulger

It takes a lot to displace Lizzie Borden and her ax (besides, she wasn’t convicted), but James “Whitey” Bulger, who was born in Dorchester in 1929, was a far more prolific criminal. After being apprehended in 2011, Bulger was convicted of federal racketeering, extortion, conspiracy and 11 murders. A prominent member of Boston’s organized crime scene from the 1970s through the 1990s, Bulger had been on the FBI’s “Ten Most Wanted” list since 1995. In 2018, at the age of 89, he was killed in a West Virginia prison while serving a life sentence.

Michigan: John Eric Armstrong

Mild-mannered John Eric Armstrong of Dearborn Heights was a decorated Navy veteran, a “good neighbor” and a devoted dad. But by his own account, he couldn’t get over his breakup with his high school girlfriend. Starting in 1992 at the age of 17, he punished women—sex workers, in particular—by raping and murdering them while on shore leave. He also killed one male victim with a pipe. Armstrong was convicted in 2001 and remains incarcerated for life.

Minnesota: Tom Petters

While Minnesotans are known for being nice, there’s no question that Minnesota native Tom Petters, who was convicted of a $3.65 billion dollar Ponzi scheme, did not fit the bill. That said, he did donate a lot of his ill-gotten gains to charities and religious organizations. He’s currently serving a 50-year sentence in Leavenworth. Plus, all was not lost for his victims. At least 364 of them received a total of more than $38 million in forfeited funds.

Mississippi: Edgar Ray Killen

On the night of June 21, 1964, during the Freedom Summer drive to register southern black voters, Edgar Ray Killen arranged the murders of young civil rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, outside Philadelphia, Mississippi. It’s thought that he hired members of the mob to carry out the shootings. Killen was a founding member of the Ku Klux Klan in the Philadelphia area, as well as a sawmill operator and part-time preacher. (The events inspired the movie Mississippi Burning.) He wasn’t tried and convicted until 2005.

Missouri: Jesse James

In 1863, before he was a notorious outlaw, 16-year-old Jesse James and his brother Frank joined a group of Confederate guerrilla soldiers known as “bushwhackers” in Missouri and Kansas during the Civil War. Following the war, the James brothers rebelled against harsh postwar civil legislation, deciding to live outside the law. They were especially interested in robbing trains, stagecoaches and banks that were owned or operated by an institution from the Union.

Jesse and Frank didn’t work alone: They joined forces with Cole Younger and his brothers John, Jim and Bob, as well as other Confederates, to form the James-Younger Gang. Known for committing robberies throughout the West, the gang operated until 1882. At his peak, James was one of the most feared criminals in American history. After his death at the hands of fellow gang member Robert Ford in 1882, James became a legend of the Old West.

Montana: Ted Kaczynski

Theodore “Ted” Kaczynski came to the attention of the FBI in 1978 following the explosion of his first primitive homemade bomb at a Chicago university. Living in the backwoods of Montana, he built and sent increasingly sophisticated mail bombs between 1978 and 1995, killing three people and injuring 23 more. He moved to the state in the early 1970s and lead a remote, survivalist lifestyle while developing his anti-government ethos. The name Unabomber came from the FBI, and it combined “university” and “airline”—Kaczynski’s preferred targets.

Nebraska: Charlie Starkweather and Caril Fugate

Although they were captured in Wyoming, it was in Nebraska that 20-year-old Charlie Starkweather and his 14-year-old girlfriend, Caril Fugate, began a murder spree in 1958. During a one-week period, Starkweather—and possibly Fugate—killed 11 people, including Caril’s mother, stepfather and baby half-sister. The remaining murders were committed during a violent statewide road trip. Their story has been referenced in numerous movies, books and songs—most notably in the film Badlands and the song “Nebraska” by Bruce Springsteen.

Nevada: Bugsy Siegel

Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel was born in New York in 1906 and died in California in 1947, but he rose to infamy in Las Vegas. Born into poverty in Brooklyn, Siegel knew he wanted more out of life and decided to turn to crime to get it. He started his first gang at the age of 14. As an adult, Siegel supervised the organized crime–funded construction of the Flamingo Hotel and Casino, which opened in 1946. It was to be his final criminal endeavor—the construction went $4 million over budget, and his mob bosses ordered a hit on Siegel. He was shot to death in his Beverly Hills home.

New Hampshire: H.H. Holmes

H.H. Holmes was born Herman Webster Mudgett in 1861 to an affluent New Hampshire family. His criminal behavior began with simple con games but soon escalated to murder. Known as America’s first serial killer, Holmes may have killed as many as 200 people, many of them in a house he built for precisely that purpose—known as the Murder Castle—near the site of the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair. You can read more about the Holmes story in the excellent book Devil in the White City, which is in the works to become a feature-length film starring Leonardo DiCaprio.

New Jersey: Bruno Richard Hauptmann

The most notorious crime committed by Bruno Richard Hauptmann may be more notorious than the criminal himself. Hauptmann was convicted and executed for the 1932 kidnapping of Charles Lindbergh Jr.—better known as “the Lindbergh baby”—from the Lindbergh home in Hopewell, New Jersey. The 20-month-old toddler was the son of famous transatlantic aviator Charles Lindbergh and his wife. Although Lindbergh paid $70,000 in ransom, Charles Jr. was found murdered.

New Mexico: Billy the Kid

Billy the Kid was born in New York in 1859 but gained fame as a gunfighter and thief in the Wild West. Not much is known about his childhood, but he started engaging in petty theft at the age of 15, after his mother died of tuberculosis. He claimed to have killed 21 people, and he participated in the famed Lincoln County War in New Mexico. Soon after, he was arrested and sentenced to death for the murder of a law enforcement officer, but he escaped by killing the guards charged with holding him. Billy was finally shot down in 1881 by Fort Sumner sheriff Pat Garett.

New York: Robert Chambers

Between David Berkowitz (the Son of Sam killer who terrorized New York City), John Gotti (the infamous “Dapper Don” crime boss) and Bernie Madoff (whose multi-billion-dollar investment firm turned out to be a devastating Ponzi scheme), it’s tough to settle on a most-notorious criminal in New York. But we’re going with Robert Chambers, the handsome, private-school-educated “preppie” who murdered 18-year-old Jennifer Levin behind the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The so-called “Preppie Murder” forever changed the way many thought of consensual sex and seemingly innocent teenage dramas.

North Carolina: Henry Louis Wallace

Most serial killers go after strangers: Henry Louis Wallace targeted people he knew—and all of his 10 victims were African-American women. He even attended some of their funerals. Many in the African-American community were outraged that law enforcement wasn’t more proactive in pursuing the so-called “Taco Bell Strangler” (Wallace was a manager at the chain and killed several employees). Before that, he had served in the Navy and was honorably discharged. Wallace received the death penalty for his crimes, and he is currently awaiting execution at Central Prison in Raleigh.

North Dakota: Harry Louis Carignan

North Dakota born Harry Louis Carignan was sentenced to death for a murder he committed in Anchorage, Alaska, way back in 1949. But because of a law enforcement error in eliciting Carignan’s confession, the sentence was reversed. He stayed in prison for another nine years on rape charges and then was paroled in 1960. He went on to abduct, assault and murder a number of other women across the country before he was apprehended in Minnesota in 1974. His conviction resulted in a 40-year sentence, which he’s still serving today.

Ohio: Jeffrey Dahmer

The “Milwaukee Cannibal” may have done most of his damage in Wisconsin, but Jeffrey Dahmer spent most of his childhood in Ohio. His horrific upbringing included sexual abuse by a neighbor, neglect by his mentally ill mother and being treated as a misfit by most everyone else.

Born in 1960, Dahmer committed his first murder in 1978 and continued until he was caught in 1991. He murdered a total of 17 men and boys (mostly Black men), seeking out his victims at gay bars, malls and bus stops, making him one of the most famous criminals in the country at the time. Sentenced to 15 life terms, he was murdered by another inmate less than four years in.

Oklahoma: Timothy McVeigh

Born in Lockport, New York, in 1968, Timothy McVeigh earned a Bronze Star from the Army for his service in the Persian Gulf. But he returned disillusioned and soon began planning what would become one of the most deadly acts of domestic terrorism in American history—the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. The bombing in September 1994 killed 168 people, including 19 young children. At least 650 others were wounded. McVeigh was apprehended shortly after the bombing and executed in June 2001. The bombing remains the deadliest instance of domestic terrorism in American history.

Oregon: Randall Woodfield

In 1974, Oregon-born Randall Woodfield was a handsome, all-American boy from a well-to-do family who was all set to play football for the Green Bay Packers when he was cut from the team after a series of arrests for indecent exposure. A closer look at his background would reveal a lifetime of strange behavior, including an arrest for indecent exposure during high school.

Woodfield would go on to become known as the “I-5 Killer” for the robberies, sexual assaults and murders he committed along Interstate 5, which runs through Oregon, Washington and California. Woodfield is currently serving a life sentence for the murder of a woman from Salem, Oregon, but he’s linked to nearly 20 other murders and suspected of murdering nearly 50 during his late-1970s spree.

Pennsylvania: The Sundance Kid

Born in Mon Clare in 1867 as Harry Alonzo Longabaugh, the Sundance Kid embarked on his life in crime when he met Butch Cassidy, the leader of the criminal gang known as the “Wild Bunch.” Together, they committed the longest successful run of train and bank robberies in American history. It’s believed that the Sundance Kid died on the run in Bolivia in 1908. The story of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid was immortalized in the 1969 film of the same name.

Rhode Island: The Patriarca Crime Family

The Patriarca crime family was brought down in part by notorious Massachusetts criminal (turned informant) Whitey Bulger. The family was the largest organized crime organization in Rhode Island, founded in 1916 by Gaspare Messina but renamed in the 1950s for boss Raymond Patriarca. Patriarca alone committed crimes including petty theft, bootlegging, hijacking, armed robbery and murder. In 1938 he was dubbed Providence’s “Public Enemy No. 1.” Members of his criminal enterprise have been indicted time and again on numerous racketeering charges.

South Carolina: Susan Smith

While Donald “Pee Wee” Gaskins is known as the most prolific serial killer in South Carolina, Susan Smith may have the most name recognition. The South Carolina native sent her two toddler sons to a watery grave in 1994 by strapping them into her Mazda and rolling it into John D. Long Lake. Smith initially claimed the children had been abducted by a “strange man,” but eventually, the truth came out. In 2015, Smith sent a letter to The State newspaper claiming that she “is not the monster society thinks” she is, and that she was a good mother and didn’t plan to kill her children.

South Dakota: James Brudos

Serial murderer and necrophile James Brudos was born in South Dakota in 1939 and suffered a troubled childhood, which may have led to his developing some dark and violent fetishes. He started by abducting and beating a woman when he was 17. During the 1960s, he murdered four women in Oregon, earning him the monikers “The Shoe Fetish Slayer” and “The Lust Killer.” Apprehended in 1969, he died in prison in 2006.

Tennessee: Machine Gun Kelly

George Kelly Barnes—better known as “Machine Gun Kelly”—was born in Memphis in 1895. He began his criminal career in bootlegging and then moved up to bank robbery. He got his first machine gun, and his nickname, from his wife, who became his accomplice. After he kidnapped a wealthy oil tycoon, the FBI conducted a multi-state investigation to track him down. Kelly was finally caught, arrested and sentenced to life in prison in 1933. He died in 1954.

Texas: Kenneth Lay

Some people don’t use a gun to commit their crimes. Kenneth Lay was born in Missouri but became arguably Texas’s most notorious criminal because of his role as chairman and chief executive of Enron Corp., which he helped drive into bankruptcy by selling off $300 million in stock over more than a decade. The bankruptcy filing was the biggest in U.S. history at the time, costing 20,000 employees their jobs and their life savings and losing billions of investor dollars. Although Lay was indicted on 11 counts of securities fraud, wire fraud and making false and misleading statements, he died before sentencing.

Utah: Butch Cassidy

The leader of the Wild Bunch gang and partner-in-crime with the Sundance Kid, Butch Cassidy was born Robert Leroy Parker in 1866 in Beaver, Utah. Cassidy, who took his name from Mike Cassidy, a cattle thief he met during his travels, is considered one of the “great hustlers” of the American West, known for robbing banks and trains in the early 1900s. He began his life of crime long before he met the Sundance Kid. There is speculation that he survived the shootout in Bolivia that killed Sundance and returned to the United States, where he died of cancer in 1937.

Vermont: Ted Bundy

Ted Bundy, a serial killer, rapist and necrophiliac, is considered by many to be one of the most famous criminals of the 20th century. He was born in Burlington, Vermont, in 1946. Handsome and charming, Bundy admitted to killing 36 women in the 1970s—across a number of states, but mostly in Florida. Law enforcement estimates the number of victims as much higher, as many as 100. He was executed in Florida in 1989 at the age of 42, so the truth may never be known. The subject of numerous movies, books and TV shows, Bundy looms large in popular culture.

Virginia: Seung-Hui Cho

Born in South Korea in 1984, Seung-Hui Cho was the shooter who killed 32 people at Virginia Tech University in 2007. The shooting at Virginia Tech is known as one of the most devastating mass murders in American history and the largest campus shooting since the Texas Tower shooting in 1966 at the University of Texas, Austin. In a haunting letter to the media written before the shootings and actually mailed during his murderous spree, Seung-Hui Cho referenced the Columbine school shooters, Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris. Like Klebold and Harris, he ended the spree by turning his gun on himself.

Washington: Gary Leon Ridgway

Gary Leon Ridgway is Oregon’s Green River Killer. Born in 1949 and now serving 48 consecutive life terms, Ridgway confessed to killing at least 49 women along State Route 99, most in South King County, between 1982 and 2001. But he didn’t just murder the women: He transported them back to his house, strangled them and then abandoned the bodies in remote wooded sites. Ridgway’s first few victims were found along the Green River. In 2013, he claimed that he had actually murdered closer to 71 women. No one is sure whether Ridgway was telling the truth or merely seeking media attention.

West Virginia: Sheila Eddy and Rachel Shoaf

Sixteen-year-old Sheila Eddy and Rachel Shoaf committed the atrocious and senseless crime of stabbing their best friend, Skylar Neese, to death in July 2012 after luring her into their deadly trap. The girls’ inexplicable violence and cruelty caught the attention of people across the country, and the crime itself led to the enactment of Skylar’s Law, requiring Amber Alerts for all missing children (as opposed to only those suspected of being kidnapped).

Wisconsin: Anissa Weier and Morgan Geyser

In another tale of young girls inexplicably turning on a friend, 12-year-olds Anissa Weier and Morgan Geyser stabbed their classmate Payton Leutner 19 times on May 31, 2014. The motive? They were trying to placate an imaginary internet horror figure known as “Slender Man.” At the time, Geyser and Weier believed that Slender Man was real and lived in the woods of northern Wisconsin. Though she was left for dead, Leutner survived, and both Weier and Geyser are spending the next several decades in mental institutions.

Wyoming: Polly Bartlett and Keith Hunter Jesperson

Polly Bartlett has been called the “first and worst” serial killer in Wyoming history. She ran a boarding house where she may have poisoned as many as 22 of her guests before she was shot by a friend of one of her victims. While Keith Hunter Jesperson is a far less prolific killer, he captured media attention when he drew a happy face alongside a murder confession in 1990. While the “Happy Face Killer” claims a body count of 160, he’s forensically linked to only eight. He’s currently serving time in an Oregon prison.

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