- today
Justice delayed, but not denied. Join us as we examine the chilling cases of murderers who evaded capture for decades before finally facing consequences for their heinous acts. From the BTK Killer to the Golden State Killer, these predators thought they had gotten away with murder, only to be caught years—sometimes half a century—after their crimes began.
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00:00Uh, what year did Marianna occur?
00:02Uh, 72.
00:04Okay, 1972.
00:05Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're looking at 10 serial killers who went decades without being caught.
00:11I mean, is he still active? Is he still killing? Because to the best of our knowledge, he had stopped.
00:17David Parker Ray.
00:19Quite frankly, disgusting. The depth of perversion and the extent of criminality involved in this case.
00:25The toy box killer was never technically convicted of a single murder.
00:29However, authorities strongly suspect that he was involved in about 60 killings, most of which were conducted in his sick toy box.
00:36This was the name of the soundproof semi-trailer in which Ray took, imprisoned, tormented, and eventually murdered his victims.
00:43Police begin their search of the site to gather physical evidence for the case.
00:47What they unearth sickens even the most experienced investigators.
00:52Most of these crimes occurred in the 1980s, long before Ray was captured in 1999.
00:56However, Ray claims that his crimes go back much earlier, and he even told his wife that he murdered his first victim in 1957, when he was just 18 years old.
01:06If this story is true, that would mean Ray went 42 years between murdering his first victim and getting caught.
01:12When you look at the evidence that's been collected to date, when you look at the crime scene, it is clearly evident that in this particular case, anything is possible.
01:22And we will not rule out the possibility that this case does involve homicide.
01:28Terry Rasmussen.
01:30Everybody came out. We actually had to contact the medical examiner, and they confirmed that they did appear to be human remains.
01:36Known as the Chameleon Killer owing to his many aliases, Terry Rasmussen was officially convicted of one murder, but has been linked to at least five more.
01:45He is strongly suspected of killing the Allentown Four, four victims that were found inside barrels in New Hampshire's Bear Brook State Park.
01:52On May 9th in 2000, New Hampshire State Police Detective John Cody found a second barrel on the same property in Allentown.
02:00That barrel contained the remains of two more of Rasmussen's victims.
02:03These victims are believed to have died between 1978 and 1981, and one of them was found to be the biological daughter of Rasmussen.
02:12He is also suspected of murdering his girlfriend, Denise Bowden, who disappeared in 1981.
02:17But the death that finally brought Rasmussen down was that of Eun Sun Jun, another girlfriend that Rasmussen murdered in 2002.
02:24He was arrested for her murder that same year, decades after supposedly killing his other five victims.
02:29Well, when you find the second barrel, how soon after did you start thinking, we might have a serial killer?
02:36You know, I think that was in the realm of possibilities. I'm sure it was originally discussed.
02:40Robert Lee Yates.
02:42Two years after murdering two students at Mill Creek, the killer, 25-year-old Robert Lee Yates Jr., joined the army.
02:50In October, he decided to become a pilot. But during his 18 years of service, he could not contain his murderous urges.
02:59A seemingly normal man, Robert Lee Yates served many years with the United States Army, serving as a helicopter pilot between 1977 and 1996.
03:08By the time he left the army, he had already murdered three people.
03:12His crime spree dates back to 1975, when he shot and murdered Patrick Oliver and Susan Savage while they were picnicking near Walla Walla.
03:19This was an area that he knew quite well. It was out in the middle of nowhere, and he was fairly confident that he wasn't going to be disturbed.
03:26And it wouldn't surprise me if he'd been fantasizing about this for quite some time.
03:30And he comes across two college graduates, and he decides that he's going to kill them. And that's what he does.
03:37He then went quiet until 1988, when he killed Stacey Hahn. But most of Yates' murders occurred in the late 1990s, after he had left active service.
03:46He murdered 13 people around Spokane County between 1996 and 1998, bringing his total body count to 16.
03:53He was finally arrested and charged in 2000, 25 years after shooting Oliver and Savage.
03:58In an ironic twist of fate, he's now housed in the same facility that he once served in as a prison guard 25 years earlier.
04:08A fitting end for the monstrous murderer.
04:11Robert Durst
04:12Famed subject of HBO's The Jinx, Robert Durst definitely killed two people and possibly four others between 1971 and 2003.
04:34Authorities strongly suspect that Durst murdered his first wife, Kathleen McCormick, who disappeared in 1982.
04:40Fast forward 18 years, when Durst murdered his friend, Susan Berman, in December 2000.
04:45In an office waiting to interview someone, and I look at the Daily News, and there's this tiny little story out of L.A.
04:52that Susan Berman was found shot dead in L.A., and I almost fell out of my chair. I just sat straight up and I wanted to leave.
05:02He also killed his neighbor Morris Black in 2001, but he was acquitted of murder, with Durst successfully claiming self-defense.
05:09Aside from those core three, Durst is also a suspect in three other disappearances, including that of Lynn Schultz, who visited Durst's store in 1971 and subsequently vanished.
05:19It wasn't until The Jinx aired in 2015 that investigators re-examined his past, and he was convicted of Susan Berman's murder in 2021.
05:28New York real estate heir Robert Durst has been convicted of his best friend's murder.
05:32Yesterday, a Los Angeles jury found him guilty of killing Susan Berman back in 2000.
05:38Prosecutors say it was to cover up the disappearance of his wife in 1982.
05:42Rex Heuerman
05:43The internet essentially goes insane, and a big part of that is because there was no information for so long.
05:49I mean, it was something that was unfathomable for so many people.
05:52For many years, the Long Island serial killer was one of the most famous examples of a modern-day serial killer eluding justice.
05:59News of the killer broke in late 2010, when the remains of four victims were found alongside Ocean Parkway near Gilgo, New York.
06:06Seven more were found throughout the following year, all of them scattered around Ocean Parkway.
06:11This remained a tantalizing mystery until 2023, when a New York architect named Rex Heuerman was arrested and charged with some of the murders.
06:19Rex Heuerman had searched for information about the Gilgo Beach murders more than 200 times.
06:27The thing that sort of jumps out at you was he was also searching for the victim's family members, their sisters, and in one instance, their child.
06:37So that was concerning.
06:39Police have since connected Heuerman with many older crimes, including the murder of Sandra Castilla, which occurred in 1993.
06:46As of 2025, he has been charged with murdering seven women, including Castilla.
06:52But that is what prosecutors are saying.
06:54They believe that around that time, 1993, Rex Heuerman began this killing spree.
07:01And that is really the really big news out of what we're hearing today.
07:05Samuel Little.
07:06The FBI has officially linked Samuel Little to 60 murders, making him the most prolific serial killer in American history.
07:25However, his true body count is likely much higher, with Little himself confessing to 93.
07:30Little's penchant for murder came on the radar in 1982, when he was arrested for murdering Melinda LaPree.
07:36However, a grand jury declined to indict him, and he was released.
07:40But indeed, Little had begun killing people around this time.
07:43Las Vegas. Describe the Las Vegas victim.
07:46He killed in 93.
07:48His earliest confirmed victim is Annie Stewart, who was killed on October 11, 1981.
07:54But Little confessed to murdering Mary Jo Broseley as early as 1970.
07:58He was finally arrested on September 5, 2012, a full 31 years after his first confirmed victim had been killed.
08:05When I left her up in there, in that little road up there, on the side of the road, she was like partially concealed by the vegetation.
08:14I left her there.
08:17Lonnie David Franklin Jr.
08:19And I was completely shocked when I heard this, because I had never heard anything before about any serial killer in South Central.
08:30This serial killer's nickname is indicative of his long span.
08:33Lonnie David Franklin Jr. is better known as the Grim Sleeper, so named because he was inactive between 1988 and 2002.
08:41Franklin's first confirmed victim is 29-year-old Deborah Jackson, who was killed in August 1985.
08:46However, authorities strongly suspect his involvement in the death of Sharon Dismuky, who was murdered a year and a half earlier.
08:53There was a murder on January 15, 1984.
08:58Her name was Sharon Alice Dismuky.
09:02Then Deborah Jackson was found murdered in August of 1985 in an alleyway in South Los Angeles.
09:11Franklin's final victim was Janisha Peters, who was found dead in January 2007.
09:16All told, the Grim Sleeper killed between 10 and 25 people.
09:20He was finally arrested on July 7, 2010, and charged with 10 counts of murder, decades after his crime spree began in the mid-1980s.
09:29Years and years went by, and the case went cold.
09:33I was upset.
09:34I was really pissed off.
09:35They weren't really looking.
09:37We weren't trying to find out who hurt me.
09:39Gary Ridgway
09:39Of course, I didn't know that two days later, I was going to be called back to that riverbank, just upstream, for two more bodies.
09:49In the 1980s, five bodies were found near Washington's Green River, leading authorities to suspect a serial killer.
09:56The Green River Killer was born, and funnily enough, Gary Ridgway was suspected pretty much immediately.
10:02Ridgway was considered a suspect in the disappearance of Marie Malvar, and he was even interviewed by the police.
10:07But they were unable to link him to the crime, and he was released.
10:10I never had a thought that we weren't going to catch him.
10:14I just wondered how, when, and where.
10:17And I knew I wanted to be a part of it.
10:19By the time he passed a polygraph in 1984, he had already murdered dozens of people.
10:24In fact, of Ridgway's 49 confirmed victims, all but four were killed between 1982 and 1984.
10:31His last known victim was Patricia Yellowrobe in 1998, and Ridgway was finally arrested in 2001.
10:37Look, when you have a chance to solve a 50, and you know this guy is never getting out of prison ever again, he will never kill again, and you can give answers to families that have been waiting for answers for 20 years, I would do it again in a heartbeat.
10:55Dennis Rader.
10:56Say who you are.
10:58You're BTK.
10:59I'm BTK.
11:00Basically, that was it.
11:02Who are you?
11:02Say it.
11:03I'm BTK.
11:04And after that, the floodgates just opened.
11:07BTK was finally brought down by his own hubris.
11:10It's poetic.
11:11Active in Kansas between 1974 and 1991, BTK killed at least 10 people, and often sent taunting letters to the police, fashioning himself as a criminal mastermind.
11:21And indeed, he was smart enough to get away with it.
11:24For a while, at least.
11:25After a 13-year hiatus, BTK again began contacting police and media.
11:30And in 2005, he sent a floppy disk to Wichita's KSAS-TV.
11:35On February 16, 2005, a local news station receives yet another package from the BTK killer.
11:42Inside it, the item police had been hoping for, a computer disk.
11:46Police then used personal data that was stored on the disk and traced it to one Dennis Rader, a local Cub Scout leader and president of a local church council.
11:54He was finally arrested on February 25, 2005, 31 years after his crime spree began in 1974.
12:02We could tell that it was somehow affiliated with Christ Lutheran Church and the Park City Community Public Library.
12:08And the next thing we looked at was statistics, and it shows here that it was last saved by Dennis.
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12:30Joseph James D'Angelo
12:31It's so warm and conquered tonight that people have their doors and windows open, but the police are saying lock up tight.
12:37Justice often comes, but sometimes it comes late.
12:41Such was the case with Joseph James D'Angelo, who for a long time was known by various monikers,
12:46including the Visalia Ransacker, Erons, and the Golden State Killer.
12:49His crime spree began in 1974, and between then and 1986, he committed dozens of sexual assaults and murdered at least 13 people.
12:58Getting an awful lot of calls, people reporting prowler calls, suspicious circumstances, some people even turning in their neighbors.
13:06He was also known to taunt the police, often with obscene phone calls.
13:10His story became one of the most infamous cold cases in California history, but thanks to the magic of genetic genealogy,
13:16D'Angelo was finally caught and arrested in April 2018.
13:20By then, D'Angelo was 72 years old, and his first victim had been dead for over four decades.
13:26They have been searching for more than four decades, and tonight the major clue that unlocked this just days ago.
13:31Can you think of any other examples? Let us know in the comments below.
13:35The feeling is indescribable. I am so happy. I feel so blessed.
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