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The Heinous Crimes Committed By the World's Most Notorious Killers
From bodies buried in a family's yard in England to tourists murdered along the shores of Thailand, a new Peacock series explores international stories of unspeakable horror.
Peacock's new true crime docuseries, World’s Most Notorious Killers, will give viewers a close-up look at some of the most chilling and dangerous murderers who have been brought to justice.
From a daughter who was killed and buried under the garden patio, to sex workers who were strangled with their own bras, World's Most Notorious Killers explores the shocking crimes committed by murderers from across the globe.
The five-part unscripted series — premiering Tuesday, September 17, 2024 on NBCUniversal's streaming service — covers the atrocities of six separate murderers (two were a married couple), and features interviews with those who lived through them and helped solve the the cases.
Here are the murderers who made it on to the list of the World’s Most Notorious Killers, and some of the heinous crimes they committed.
Fred West
The city of Gloucester, England, was in shock in 1994 when police descended onto the property of Fred West and his wife Rosemary “Rose” West at 25 Cromwell St., which later became known by media in the UK as the “House of Horrors." At the time, police were investigating the whereabouts of the couple’s daughter, Heather West, who was 16 when she disappeared in 1987, and was never reported missing.
Heather's remains were among nine sets of female remains ultimately found at 25 Cromwell St. Many were tenants or lodgers at the Wests’ terraced home. The victims had been dismembered, and were buried under and around the house in vertical graves, according to CNN.
Another three victims would be found elsewhere.
Between 1967 and 1987, the Wests preyed on vulnerable young females, living out their disturbing sexual fantasies, which included being tied up and imprisoned. Those victims included teens as young as 15, and an 18-year-old who was pregnant with Fred’s child when killed, according to The Independent. Rose also killed Fred's 8-year-old stepdaughter, Charmaine West, before burying her under a kitchen window at another residence that the couple lived at in the early 1970s.
Many victims were found without their fingers, toes, and kneecaps — parts believed to have been collected as trophies.
Jack Unterweger
Before he was suspected of killing at least a dozen sex workers during his international killing spree, Austria’s Jack Unterweger was once celebrated as a “reformed” killer turned author, according to the Los Angeles Times.
The timeline of bizarre events began in 1976 when Unterweger was convicted of the murder of 18-year-old Margret Schäfer, who was found beaten and strangled to death with her own bra in the Austrian woods. Unterweger, then 26, would later write that he killed the teen in a blackout rage.
In 1983, while serving a life sentence for Schäfer’s killing, Unterweger penned his critically acclaimed autobiography, Purgatory or the Trip to Jail: Report of a Guilty Man, according to The Independent. Unterweger used the memoir — much of which he fabricated — to present himself as the poster child for the reformed man, gaining the sympathy and support of literary scholars and eventually winning a presidential pardon in 1990, according to the L.A. Times.
But Unterweger went on to live a double life. Though he waltzed onto the Viennese elitist scene, only months after his 1990 release, he resumed his homicidal ways in secret. Within a year, Unterweger would beat and strangle eight sex workers with their undergarments and leave their bodies in wooded areas near Vienna and Graz.
Pursuing a career in journalism in 1991, Unterweger took a freelance assignment in the U.S. to cover the subject of sex work in America. During that time, he reportedly checked into the infamous Cecil Hotel in Los Angeles and went on police ride-alongs, all while murdering three more female sex workers in California.
Unterweger was eventually found guilty of the cross-continental murders in accordance with Austrian law. In 1992, on the same day he was sentenced to life in prison, he hanged himself, making the guilty verdict not legally binding since he'd indicated he'd planned to appeal, according to The New York Times.
Marc Dutroux
Known as “Le Monstre,” Marc Dutroux gained notoriety not just for committing rape and murder, but for the societal impact his crimes had in Belgium.
In 2004, the Brussels electrician was found guilty of the August 1995 kidnappings and murders of An Marchal, 17, and Eefje Lambrecks, 19, both of whom he kept in a manmade dungeon and subjected to weeks of drugging and rapes, according to The New York Times. During this time period, Dutroux also killed one of his several suspected accomplices, Bernard Weinstein.
All three were tortured and later buried alive at Dutroux’s Jumet, Charleroi, property, about 40 miles south of Belgium's capital city, according to The Brussels Times.
The teens’ captivity also overlapped with the captivity of missing 8-year-olds Julie Lejeune and Melissa Russo, who disappeared while on a walk in June of 1995. Dutroux spent months sexually abusing and torturing the friends until December 6, 1995, when he was taken into custody and ordered to serve four months on charges related to car theft, according to BBC. He asked his wife, Michelle Martin, to feed the children while he was away, but Martin did not, and the girls starved to death, their bodies later buried on another one of Dutroux’s properties.
Two other girls, a 12-year-old and a 14-year-old, both emaciated and subjected to abuse, would be rescued when Dutroux, Martin, and several other accomplices were arrested in August 1996.
Dutroux’s crimes were all the more appalling since he was on parole after serving only three years of a 15-year sentence for the abduction and rapes of five young girls, which he was convicted of in 1989, according to The Brussels Times. Missteps by authorities — which included them failing to find Melissa and Julie during a visit to Dutroux’s home, Dutroux breaking out of jail, and sweeping accusations of police corruption — prompted 300,000 Belgians to take to the streets of Brussels on October 20, 1996 to protest for criminal justice reform in a historic event known as The White March.
Dutroux continues to serve a life sentence, while his wife was released from prison in 2012 after serving 16 years of a 30-year sentence.
Chris Dawson
In 2022, Australian high school gym teacher Chris Dawson was found guilty and sentenced to 24 years for the disappearance and presumed murder of his wife, Lynette Joy Dawson, according to The Sydney Morning Herald. Lynette’s whereabouts have been unknown since she disappeared from their suburban Sydney home on or around January 8, 1982, though the judge in the juryless trial said that murder was “the only rational inference that the facts permit me to draw.
The judge found that Chris' motive was to move in one of his students, a 16-year-old named in court records as “J.C.,” with whom he’d had an illicit sexual relationship. J.C. moved into Chris' Bayview home — where the Dawsons’ two daughters also resided — only two days after Lynnette disappeared, according to The New Zealand Herald.
It wouldn’t be until February of 1983 that Chris reported his wife missing. He later told a court that she'd left him to join a commune, The Sydney Morning Herald reported.
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Chris and J.C. later married and divorced (though in September 2023, Chris was slapped with an extra year behind bars for sexually abusing J.C. since she was still underage when the relationship began, according to CNN). Investigators conducted searches and followed leads related to Lynette, but the efforts yielded few significant results. The case gained some media attention, largely due to Chris and his identical twin, Paul Dawson — who was later accused of abusing minors at the school where he worked — being athletes on the Rugby League’s Newtown Jets.
Despite two coronial inquests over the years leading to dead ends, Lynette was never found. Her disappearance gained the national spotlight after investigative journalist Hedley Thomas of The Australian created The Teacher’s Pet podcast.
Charles Sobhraj
Charles Sobhraj was a Saigon-born French national who killed as many as 20 Western tourists traveling Asia’s “Hippie Trail” during the 1970s, according to Al Jazeera. The crimes occurred during the tail-end of the counterculture movement, where many pilgrimaged the route that stretched from Europe to Thailand, with major stops including Bangkok, Delhi, and Istanbul.
The handsome and charming Sobhraj, a career criminal who presented himself as a gem dealer, became known for drugging numerous tourists and stealing their valuables and passports, crimes that eventually progressed to murder.
Sobhraj confessed to several 1975 murders in Thailand, though he was never extradited to face his crimes due to a lack of cooperation by witnesses, according to United Press International. Among those victims was 21-year-old Seattle student Teresa Knowlton, who was drugged and found drowned in a tidal pool, according to the Daily Mail, and Turkish man Vitali Hakim, whose burnt body was found at a Pattaya resort.
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The drugged, strangled, and burnt bodies of Dutch students Henk Bintanja, 29, and Cornelia Hemker, 25, as well as the drowning of Hakim’s girlfriend were among Sobhraj’s other crimes, according to the Daily Mail. Dubbed the “Bikini Killer” due to Knowlton and Hakim's girlfriend having on bathing suits when they were killed, Sobhraj and his then-girlfriend used Bitanja and Hemker’s passports to gain entry into Nepal, where Sobhraj killed again.
In December of 1975, American Connie Jo Bronzich and Canadian Laurent Carrière were both found burned in a field outside Kathmandu, Nepal, according to SFGate.
In 1976, Sobhraj was arrested in India after drugging a group of more than 20 French backpackers and robbing them, according to France 24. He gained favor with the prison guards and eventually drugged his handlers with poisoned cookies and escaped. He was captured days later in the popular tourist destination of Goa, India. The extra prison time for the escape helped Sobhraj avoid extradition to Thailand.
Sobhraj was released in 1997 and lived a relatively high-profile life in France before returning to Nepal in 2003. He was eventually charged and convicted for the deaths of Bronzich and Carrière and, due to old age, was released in 2022.
Sobhraj earned the nickname “The Serpent,” not just for his infamous prison escape in India but also for his overly charming ways and previous prison escapes in Afghanistan, Greece, and Iran, according to BBC.
Sobhraj will tell his side of the story in a U.S. exclusive interview on World's Most Notorious Killers, premiering Tuesday, September 17, 2024, on Peacock.
