Netflix’s hit series Mindhunter has managed to take what felt like a played-out genre of television and make it feel brand new again. It’s a crime procedural that taps into the most interesting aspects of actual crimes, and the research of Holden, Tench, and the rest of the Behavioral Sciences Unit is absolutely fascinating to watch.
The previous two seasons of Mindhunter have featured a mix of the most notorious killers in history alongside many serial murderers that the average audience probably isn’t familiar with. The series has a lot of real-life interviews to base their fictionalized interviews on, but there are some serial killers that we’re just itching to see Holden and Tench interview in season three. Some of these names might be super recognizable to you, some of them might be names you’ve never seen before in your lives, but they’re all fascinating and bizarre looks into the mind of a serial killer. So here are the top 10 serial killers we want to see on the next season of Mindhunter.
Gerald & Charlene Gallego
It’s not wildly uncommon to find couples who commit crimes together, but it is pretty unusual to find couples that commit crimes this heinous together. Gerald and Charlene Gallego abducted, sexually abused, and murdered ten people within an approximately two-year time span.
And something else that marked them as unusual killers is that while they were a pair themselves, the oftentimes took their victims in pairs as well. Out of their ten victims, only two were people that were kidnapped and killed alone. And in a scary twist that may surprise most sane people, Charlene Gallego was actually released from prison after serving 17 years in prison.
Rodney Alcala
Some people may be familiar with serial murderer Rodney Alcala because of his particularly odd claim to fame. He wasn’t really a “stand out” serial killer in most respects, but Alcala appeared on (and actually won) an episode of The Dating Game when he was young.
And in an even more bizarre twist, Alcala had already been arrested and convicted of violent crimes before his appearance on the dating show, in fact, he had even appeared on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list a few years before his TV guest spot. Here’s hoping today’s game shows and reality shows do a bit more due diligence on the people they put on screen.
Richard Cottingham
The media loves to give serial murders unique and horrifying nicknames, but Richard Cottingham’s nom de guerre really takes the cake. Before he was apprehended he was typically called some variation of the Times Square Torso Killer, on account of the fact that he dismembered his murder victims and only left their torso behind.
Like many other serial murderers, Cottingham targeted sex workers, and he would typically torture and abuse them in order to “punish” them before finally killing them. The world also got some insight into his modus operandi because he actually had a victim who survived and testified in his trial.
Velma Barfield
It’s safe to say that men have pretty much cornered the market on the whole serial killer biz, but it seems like a significant oversight that the Behavioral Science Unit has literally never interviewed a female serial killer throughout the course of Mindhunter.
Serial killer Velma Barfield seems to have killed people out of convenience or for revenge more than anything, and she managed to off her husband, her mother, and a series of acquaintances before finally being captured. And even though she “only” killed six people, she is one of the rare women who was convicted, given the death penalty, and actually executed.
Herbert Mullin
The serial killers everyone has already seen on Mindhunters have demonstrated that murderers will come up with every excuse under the sun to explain why they’ve done what they’ve done, but Californian killer Herbert Mullin really has a unique motivation behind his killings.
Mullin murdered 13 people in under a year’s time, and after he was apprehended he explained that voices in his head told him that he had to ritually sacrifice people in order to prevent earthquakes. It’s hard to say whether or not he just made it up or if he really was that insane, but the Behavioral Science Unit has the perfect excuse to interview him, he actually resided in the cell next to Edmund Kemper at one point.
The Chicago Rippers
Most people reading this article are probably way too young to remember this, but there was a really bizarre wave of cultural hysteria in the ’80s and ’90s that was commonly referred to as “Satanic panic”. It was a widespread belief that there were secret Satanic cults committing violent crimes in service of the devil.
And that idea obviously seems insane, however, there was actually a group of men commonly referred to as the Chicago Rippers who did commit really violent and torturous serial killings as a part of their Satanic cult. Oh, and if that isn’t terrifying enough on its own, one of the men was actually released on parole in March of this year.
Kenneth Bianchi & Angelo Bueno Jr.
Before cousins Angelo Bueno Jr. and Kenneth Bianchi were discovered, it was assumed that their crimes were actually being committed by one person, not two. And before they were captured, the nickname for the killer committing these killings was the Hillside strangler.
There are a lot of interesting elements to serial killings that were committed by more than one person, but one way that they would be particularly invaluable to the Behavioral Science Unit is that their stories can essentially be verified or debunked by one another. The killers in Mindhunter seem to lie more than they tell the truth, so being able to compare their stories and suss out what’s real or fake would be very helpful.
Patrick Kearney
There seems to be a very strange trend among serial killers once they’ve been caught. If their case seems completely hopeless, they’ll often times start admitting to a litany of other murders that can’t be verified by police.
Most people have never heard of the killer Patrick Kearney, but law enforcement is certain that he actually committed 21 murders throughout his “career”, and he confessed to killing twice as many as that. And many suspect that his murders were motivated by necrophilia, he didn’t appear to torture his victims for an extended period of time but he did experiment with and abuse their bodies once they were dead.
John Wayne Gacy
John Wayne Gacy seems like the kind of serial killer who would fit right into the narrative of Mindhunter at this point in the series. He’s certainly an interesting subject because of the whole “killer clown” thing, but there’s another reason he’s valuable to Holden and Tench.
Unlike many of the killers that they have interviewed in the past, Gacy is someone who managed to lead a relatively normal life before finally being caught. In a lot of ways, it seems like he might mirror the BTK killer and his ability to blend into society, and since BTK is the main subplot of the series it seems like a John Wayne Gacy interview should be inevitable.
Ted Bundy
Mindhunter does an excellent job of featuring many serial murderers that most viewers won’t be familiar with and murderers that are “big names” in the killer world. But it seems impossible that they can avoid featuring the biggest ticket killer of the era, Ted Bundy.
Not only is Ted Bundy’s fame having a sudden renaissance, but he obviously has a lot to offer to the Behavioral Science Unit as well. He’s not just a murderer who got away with his crimes for quite a long time, he was a killer who was apprehended by the authorities and managed to escape, so his information seems invaluable to their research.
