Gerald Thomas Archer was a serial killer that was active from 1969 to 1971. He committed his murders in the town of London, Ontario. He was nicknamed ‘The London Chambermaid Slayer’ because his targeted victims were women that worked in hotels. After sexually assaulting his victims he would then proceed to beat and stab them to death. Charles Kennedy. Charlotte’s worst serial killer targeted people he knew, as in, knew so well he actually attended the funeral of one and filed a missing persons report for. AMW has aired the case of the still unidentified West Mesa Serial Killer out of Albuquerque, New Mexico four times between 2009 and 2010. This perpretrator is believed to be responsible for the murders of 11 women and girls (plus an unborn fetus) who disappeared between 2003 to 2005. 10 Worst Serial Killers 10. Wayne Williams – Body count: 2-31. Thought to be responsible for the infamous “Atlanta Child Murders” that took place in Atlanta, Georgia, between the years of 1979 and 1981, Williams was actually convicted of the murder of two adult men (29 year old Jimmy Payne and 27 year old Nathaniel Carter).

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By/April 8, 2020 3:20 pm EDT/Updated: Feb. 17, 2021 6:30 pm EDT

In a world that tends to frown on murdering your fellow man, serial killers are often considered the worst of the worst. Yet, they're very, very real. It's borderline unbelievable that anyone would choose to kill people over and over again. It's even harder to believe that there are actually plenty of people like that out there: According to the Atlantic, the FBI believes that under one percent of all unsolved murders are the work of serial killers. Meanwhile, Thomas Hargrove of the Murder Accountability Project thinks that as of 2019, the U.S. alone had something like 2,100 unidentified serial killers running around. Author and former police detective Michael Arntfield thinks that the number could be as high as 4,000.

Obviously, we have no way to know for sure which of these undiscovered serial killers are most terrifying, because, well, they haven't been caught yet. Still, we definitely do know about some of them .. and what we know is pretty scary. Let's take a look at some of the most dangerous serial killers who are still out and about in 2020.

Pedro Alonzo Lopez may have killed over 300 people

When you're known as 'The Monster of the Andes,' you have a lot of monstrosity to live up to, and according to Biography, Pedro Alonzo Lopez is as terrifying as they come. The Colombian serial killer and diagnosed sociopath wandered around Peru and Ecuador, targeting young girls. While it's estimated that he may have killed over 300 people, he was ultimately convicted for 'just' 110 murders.

What is Lopez doing on this list if we already know who he was and he's already been caught? Well, they did indeed catch him in 1980, but seeing as this was in Ecuador, the country's laws only allowed a maximum prison sentence of 16 years. Out of these, he spent 14 years in a prison. In 1995, he was released for good behavior, and deported to his native Colombia, where he was declared insane and put in a psychiatric hospital. In early 1998, he was declared sane, which proved to be a bad move. Lopez promptly visited his elderly mother to demand his inheritance, and upon learning that she was poor, he sold her possessions (a chair and a bed) on the street. After that, he disappeared without a trace. No one knows where this terrifying man is today, though there is some concern that he may have had a hand in at least one murder since his vanishing act.

The mysterious smiley face drownings

Imagine a group that ruthlessly stalks young, inebriated victims, and kills them in a way that makes it very difficult to tell whether the death was accidental or not. As Rolling Stone reported in 2019, professor of criminal justice Lee Gilbertson and former NYPD detectives Kevin Gannon and Anthony Duarte think this terrifying scenario is a very real thing. Since 2008, they have posited a theory that some sort of gang or a group of 'domestic terrorists' is targeting young, white men with a college education, often after a night of drinking. They abduct them, murder them, and make the deaths look like accidental drownings. The only sign of their involvement is an ominous smiley face graffiti near the alleged crime scenes.

If you think it's more than possible a young guy with some alcohol in his blood stream might indeed drown accidentally, well, the FBI agrees with you. Then again, Gilbertson, Gannon, and Duarte say they've discovered that some of the over 40 victims they believe to have identified have been missing for weeks, yet their bodies only showed signs of having only been dead for days upon discovery. The bodies also have traces of the infamous date drug GHB, which could have been used to incapacitate the victims before kidnapping them. Even more chillingly, the trio think that the 'Smiley Face Killers' might be involved in as many as 335 deaths. Accidental drownings or serial killers, that's a lot of senseless death.

The Freeway Phantom serial killer terrorized Washington D.C.

You'd be forgiven for not being familiar with the Freeway Phantom. According to Cheryl W. Thompson of the Washington Post, this brutal serial killer operated around Washington D.C. during the ruthless early 1970s, when the homicide investigators in the area were up to their eyebrows in murder cases. Nevertheless, this particular serial killer stood out. The murderer's reign of terror started in April 1971, and over the next 17 months, he abducted and killed six young African-American girls and left their bodies near large roads with plenty of traffic. The case became known as the 'Freeway Phantom Murders,' and frighteningly, the killer was never caught. If he's alive, he may well still be out there somewhere.

A large part of why the Freeway Phantom was never caught was the unfortunate fact that he's thought to have been the first serial killer in the area, so apart from the victims' families and a sympathetic detective called Romaine Jenkins, no one really knew (or cared) how to proceed with the investigation, at least until the FBI stepped in .. in 1974. Unfortunately, while their sizable task force was able to comb through every existing lead and go through hundreds of suspects, and despite some lines of investigation with lots of potential, the killer was never found.

The Highway of Tears may be the hunting ground of serial killers

Highway of Tears, as the New York Times reports, is the less than flattering nickname for Highway 16, an isolated, 450-mile stretch of road in Canada's British Columbia. The road has a dark reputation, and for a good reason. Along it and two others roads connecting to it, dozens of girls and women have been murdered .. or they've simply disappeared. Almost all of the victims have been indigenous, and almost all the cases are unsolved.

It's pretty clear that there is a killer about — or rather, several killers, seeing as the Royal Canadian Mounties have connected cases going back to at least 1969. The official number of dead or missing women on the Highway of Tears between the years 1969 and 2006 was 18, but many believe that the number could be as high as 50.

To be fair, it's unlikely that all of these deaths are the work of a single killer. We know this because one serial killer has already been caught: In 2014, Cody Legebokoff was convicted for killing four women near the infamous road. Unfortunately, British Columbia has a reputation for serial killers who target indigenous women, and seeing as Legebokoff was only 24 when he was convicted and his crimes were only a small fraction of all the unsolved cases, the Highway of Tears' fearsome reputation lives on.

The Zodiac killer was never caught

Apart from Jack the Ripper, the Zodiac Killer is arguably the most famous unsolved serial killer case out there. Unlike the Ripper, however, there's a chance that the Zodiac might still be walking among the living, looking to make them dead. As Biography tells us, the Zodiac Killer murdered at least five people in the San Francisco Bay Area in 1968 and 1969, taunting the press and the police with boastful letters, phone calls, and strange codes. There's a possibility that he also committed other murders before these famous ones.

Despite a robust amount of leads — from fingerprint evidence to eyewitness accounts and a police sketch — and the killer's own, constant messages, no suspect was ever arrested and the killings eventually stopped. While some of the potential candidates to don the Zodiac Killer's hood have already died, the fact that we still have no idea about his identity means that he could very well still be out there .. though he'd probably be at

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