- 4 hours ago
Some mysteries are better left unsolved... but that's never stopped anyone from theorizing! Join us as we count down the most popular and outlandish conspiracy theories surrounding history's most infamous serial killers! Do you believe any of these wild claims? Let us know in the comments!
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00Manson did with the girls, create people who would kill without regret or remorse, on command.
00:10Welcome to WatchMojo.
00:12And today, we're looking at 10 of the most popular and outlandish conspiracy theories regarding famous serial killers.
00:20A windowless room completely lined with asbestos to muffled sound.
00:31Before we continue, check out this single from SoundMojo's Aria, Songs from Iran, reimagining Persian melodies as modern rock, metal,
00:39and pop songs.
00:40Check out the full track and album below.
00:50When I rise, you fill my head. In every dream, it's you I've made.
00:57The Cecil Hellmouth, Richard Ramirez.
01:01The Cecil was a place where serial killers, you know, let their hair down.
01:07And if you didn't watch yourself, you might come flying out the window.
01:11The Night Stalker terrorized California with a series of random and brutal home invasions in the mid-1980s, murdering at
01:19least 15 people and leaving many more injured and scarred.
01:23During his crime spree, Ramirez frequently stayed at the Cecil Hotel in Los Angeles.
01:28And because the Cecil has a remarkably dark history, a paranormal conspiracy was born.
01:34For some reason, that hotel had some extra bit of insanity going on within those walls.
01:40It claims that the hotel sits atop a literal hellmouth or some kind of demonic vortex that spews out dark
01:47energy.
01:48So naturally, Ramirez wasn't just a psychopath, but an avatar possessed and energized by the hotel's supernatural forces.
01:56Yes, basically an in-real-life Jack Torrance.
02:00Of course, the hellmouth theory is really just a classic case of confirmation bias, an attempt to put a supernatural
02:07spin on urban decay and mental illness.
02:11A visitor staying at the Cecil, you just think, oh, I'm downtown, let me take a walk and see what's
02:16here.
02:17And little do you know that you're staying at ground zero of one of the most dangerous and violent places
02:25in the United States of America.
02:28The Headless Decoy, Belle Ganesse.
02:31This killer was an early 20th century black widow who posted lonely hard ads, lured wealthy men to her Indiana
02:38farm, and murdered them.
02:40In 1908, her farmhouse burned to the ground.
02:44In the ashes, police found her children alongside the body of a woman missing her head.
02:49The logical conclusion is that this was Ganesse.
02:52But here's where it gets weird.
02:54Ganesse's hired hand, Ray Lamphere, was convicted of arson for the fire.
03:00And he later confessed that Ganesse had ordered him to do it.
03:03He also claims that she murdered an innocent woman to serve as a decoy.
03:08And true to his claim, the headless body was notably shorter and lighter than Ganesse.
03:13To this day, it has never been definitively proven whether Ganesse died in that fire or pulled off the ultimate
03:20escape.
03:21The elite cover-up hit, Jeffrey Dahmer.
03:24So you didn't just murder them.
03:28You desecrated their bodies and cannibalized their flesh.
03:32The famous cannibal was beaten to death in 1994 by Christopher Scarver, a fellow inmate at the Columbia Correctional Institution.
03:40Yet a persistent internet fringe theory insists that this was not a random act of prison violence, but a planned
03:46assassination orchestrated by the government.
03:48Theorists claim that Dahmer wasn't just a troubled man from Milwaukee, but a procurement agent for a global syndicate of
03:56wealthy, elite cannibals.
03:58What made you do it?
04:00Did you enjoy it?
04:02I was lost.
04:05I turned away from God.
04:07According to this wild conspiracy, Dahmer was preparing to blow the whistle and name high-ranking politicians, prompting the shadow
04:14government to activate Scarver to silence him forever.
04:17In reality, there is absolutely zero evidence tying Dahmer to any external organization, and Scarver's motives for the murder were
04:26entirely his own, driven by schizophrenia and a deep personal disgust for Dahmer's gruesome crimes.
04:33You may convince yourself that God has forgiven you, but you can never escape God's wrath. It always catches up
04:46with you. Always.
04:49The nationwide snuff ring, John Wayne Gacy.
04:54Gacy is a 36-year-old building contractor who reportedly dressed like a clown to entertain a children's party.
04:59Easily one of the most popular serial killers in American history, John Wayne Gacy earned notoriety for both his horrific
05:06crimes and for working as a clown.
05:09But the theory here has nothing to do with his infamous pastime.
05:13Because Gacy was connected in both business and politics, a sprawling conspiracy theory alleges he was merely the disposal man
05:21for a nationwide human trafficking ring known as the Delta Project.
05:25In fact, the Delta Project was a real thing, and it was co-run by a man named Philip Paskey.
05:32And, wouldn't you know it, Paskey was briefly employed by Gacy in the 1970s.
05:38Gacy later claimed in jailhouse interviews that he did not act alone and that his home was used by multiple
05:44people mirroring the dorms used by the Delta Project.
05:49The day that I walked out of that house, he said, one day, you're going to read about me on
05:55the front pages of the newspapers.
05:59Even being married to him, there was a lot that I didn't know.
06:02The Processed Church Cult.
06:04David Berkowitz.
06:05In the mid-1970s, New York City was plunged into terror.
06:11I can't tell you what effect this series of crimes had on the city of New York.
06:17If there's one recurring theme in serial killer conspiracies, it's that they didn't work alone.
06:23When David Berkowitz was arrested for the Son of Sam's shootings, he famously claimed that a neighbor's demon-possessed dog
06:30commanded him to kill.
06:31He has since admitted that this story was fake and that he just used it for attention.
06:36He got messages because the dog spoke to him.
06:39And when the dog spoke to him, according to Berkowitz, relaying the message from the devil, it was time to
06:45kill.
06:45That's when he went out and killed.
06:46However, journalist Maury Terry spent years championing a theory that Berkowitz was just the fall guy for something called the
06:55Processed Church of the Final Judgment.
06:57This was supposedly a highly organized satanic cult with underground networks stretching from New York to California.
07:04Proponents argue that Berkowitz didn't act alone, but was rather a low-level member covering for the cult's actual hitmen,
07:11who were carrying out a master plan of societal terror.
07:15I knew there were no real demons, witches, talking dogs, and satanic henchmen.
07:22The MKUltra sleeper agent, Ted Bundy.
07:26An exceptionally bright student, Ted Bundy enrolled in the University of Washington in 1966 to study Chinese.
07:35And if it's not some secret cabal of killers and sex offenders, it's the government.
07:42Ted Bundy is perhaps the most famous serial killer ever, known far and wide for his high body counts, good
07:48looks, and charisma.
07:50And because he was so smart, and because he was in university in the 1960s, a fringe theory attempts to
07:57tie him to the CIA.
07:58Bundy dropped out of university in 1968.
08:02The following year, he returned to the East Coast in what he later described as a bid to understand his
08:08roots.
08:09Some believe that Bundy was a rogue test subject for MKUltra, the very real and very controversial CIA program that
08:17experimented on citizens around that time.
08:20Perhaps the government scrambled Bundy's brain using LSD and hypnosis, intending to turn him into a covert sleeper assassin.
08:28But the experiment supposedly broke his psyche, resulting in him becoming a serial killer instead.
08:34The 27-year-old had been accepted into law school again, this time at the University of Utah.
08:41On the surface, he looked like an ordinary student, but inside was a cunning serial killer.
08:48The CIA PSYOP, Charles Manson.
08:51Because I like the kids, because I can identify with the kids because they didn't have nobody like I didn't
08:57have nobody.
08:58How do you stop the hippies?
09:01You brainwash a cult leader and have him kill famous people, apparently.
09:05Building heavily on the theme of government paranoia, this story alleges that Charles Manson was an active intelligence asset working
09:12for the CIA.
09:12The idea is that the U.S. government was terrified of the growing hippie counterculture of the 1960s.
09:19Specifically, how it contradicted and protested the Vietnam War movements.
09:23I mean, Manson emerged from the hate at the end of 1967, the same time that West left, as exactly
09:31what they were trying to create.
09:34Well, it was his girls, you know, people who would kill, on command, without remorse, who would do whatever they
09:41were told to do.
09:42So, they brainwashed Manson to commit the famous Tate-LaBianca murders.
09:46The goal of the PSYOP was to completely discredit the left in the eyes of the public, painting hippies as
09:52little more than murderous vagabonds.
09:54Even if the CIA link isn't true, there's still no denying that the Manson family was highly influential in killing
10:02the hippie movement for good.
10:04Manson used LSD to create personality change and make it fixed.
10:10Make it last after the LSD trips had ended.
10:15Which is in all of the LSD research objectives for the MK Alternative scientists.
10:21The murder castle, H.H. Holmes.
10:25He's designing a multi-use building like you might see today.
10:28Retail space, offices, apartments.
10:32The sky's the limit.
10:33It's being designed with some very unusual details.
10:37We suppose this one is less conspiracy theory and more wildly exaggerated story.
10:43Basically, everyone knows by now that H.H. Holmes built a Labyrinth Hotel in Chicago for the 1893 World's Fair.
10:50He then attended the fair to pick up ladies, took them back to his castle, and murdered them with soundproof
10:56gas chambers and giant acid vats.
10:58He designs a system of pipes leading from Holmes' private apartment to each guest room, where he can control the
11:05flow of gas to asphyxiate victims.
11:08Only most modern historians have thoroughly debunked this story, arguing that the castle was just a poorly constructed building.
11:17Yes, there were multiple hidden rooms, but they were used to stash stolen goods, not corpses.
11:23Holmes was a con man first and foremost, and yes, he did kill people, but not in the way the
11:28famous story suggests.
11:30It was almost always someone he knew personally, and usually as part of a larger financial scheme.
11:36And the most eerie detail by far, a greased chute, three foot by three foot, just large enough for a
11:43body leading straight to the basement, where he installed a cremation kiln and lime pits used to eliminate the stench
11:51of rotting flesh.
11:52It was Lewis Carroll, Jack the Ripper.
12:04This famous serial killer from London was never caught, and many people have been linked to him, including Lewis Carroll.
12:13Back in 1996, Richard Wallace published a book claiming that the famous author of Alice in Wonderland was the shadowy
12:21Jack the Ripper all along.
12:22Curiouser and curiouser.
12:24His entire theory rested on anagrams.
12:27He took random paragraphs from Carroll's books and rearranged the letters to form sentences where Carroll supposedly confessed to the
12:35gruesome murders.
12:36It is absolutely bonkers.
12:39Carroll would probably be proud if it didn't besmirch his name.
12:43Unfortunately, the theory is not only extremely libelous, but it also relies entirely on parlor tricks rather than legitimate criminology.
12:51You can make an anagram out of almost any lengthy text if you try hard enough.
12:56It would be so nice if something would make sense for a change.
13:00It was Ted Cruz all along.
13:03The Zodiac Killer.
13:13We can't mention famous serial killer conspiracies without mentioning Ted Cruz as the Zodiac.
13:19This actually started as a joke on Twitter back in 2013, but by the 2016 presidential election, it had morphed
13:27into a massive viral phenomenon.
13:29The internet was flooded with side-by-side photo comparisons between Cruz and the original police sketches of the Zodiac.
13:36And some people genuinely started to believe they were one and the same.
13:43The whole goofy thing led to mainstream news articles, late-night talk show monologues, and even merchandise referencing the theory.
13:51There are just a few problems with this.
13:54For example, the Zodiac murders occurred in the late 1960s, primarily 1969.
14:00Ted Cruz was born in 1970.
14:03So, you know, it probably wasn't him.
14:11Do you subscribe to any of these theories?
14:14Let us know in the comments below.