27 January 1974 was a Sunday. In the early hours, just before 01:30 A.M., a call came through the San Francisco Police Department Emergency Dispatch.

“I believe there might be a dead person ... on the beach ... across from Ulloa Street, if you follow the street right down to the water,” the caller told a San Francisco police dispatcher. Presumably male, the call didn’t give his name, and just hung up.

Believing that it could be a drunk civilian passed out or at worst an accidental drowning, Officers rushed down to Ocean Beach to assist. Nothing could’ve prepared them for what they found at the scene.

On the water’s edge, half in and half out of the water, a man’s lifeless body. The Officers pulled the man back onto dry sand and took a close look. He seemed to be approximately 50 years old, balding, and heavy-set. But what stood out the most, they man had sustained multiple stab wounds, front and back, on his hands. He had tried to fight off his killer and succumbed to his injuries during the struggle.

This was the first confirmed victim of an unidentified serial killer believed to be responsible for between six and sixteen murders and three assaults of men in San Francisco, California, between January 1974 and September 1975. The perpetrator targeted gay men, believed he met at gay nightclubs, bars, and restaurants. He had a peculiar and ominous habit of sketching his victims prior to stabbing them to death.

This is the profile of the “Doodler.”

In the early nineties, South African authorities, overrun by Serial Killers in the wake of apartheid's collapse, were faced with one particular Serial Killer competing to be more prolific than most in their radar.

The victims of the Killer, all female. They were lured to outlying fields where they were beaten, stripped, raped, and strangled with articles of their own clothing. Some were found with their hands tied behind their backs. Others blindfolded. Many were left with pieces of clothing draped across their faces as if to prevent them from staring at the face of their killer as they die.

The serial rapist and serial killer responsible for the ABC Murders (so-called because they largely took place in Atteridgeville, Boksburg and Cleveland suburbs of Johannesburg), committed 38 murders, 40 rapes and six robberies between 1994 and 1995 in Gauteng, South Africa.

This is the profile of the “ABC Killer,” “the South African Strangler,” or “the Gauteng Killer.”