10 American Cannibal Serial Killers

The 10 American cannibal serial killers will prove to you that the world is a hopeless, desolate place full of people who would go to lengths you cannot even imagine.

Being a killer is one of the worst things a person can be. Being a serial killer, however, takes that idea one step further. Then there’s being a cannibal serial killer, which crosses all limits of depravity, and some of these people suffer from some type of untreated mental illness.

Murdering a fellow human being, unless for self-defense, is unjustifiable. It doesn’t matter whether the person killed was not a good man or was unethical. Unless you are directly in danger from the person, you have no right to kill him. And even when you in direct danger and you do kill him, there is absolutely no reason or logic in the world that will make it right for you to consume his flesh or organs. Doing that to multiple people is just horrendous.

Cannibal serial killers are not exclusive to a region, culture, or country. They can be found all across the world and some of the most famous ones include Armin Meiwes in Germany, Jorge Beltrao in Brazil and Tamara Samsonova. Grisly murders of multiple victims and their subsequent consumption saw these people achieve long-lasting notoriety.

Such people have an obvious pattern, usually luring their victims into the house on some pretext before killing them. Often, the deaths are brutal and violent. Then begins the process of consumption, which is initiated by the cutting of the victim’s flesh, which is apparently sexually gratifying to the cannibals, a sign of how deranged these people actually are.

However, it is interesting to note that sometimes cannibals, while unrepentant about their actions, still maintain a moral compass. According to Deborah Schurman, when she asked a cannibal about being accused of rape, he was not just offended, but extremely angry as well, saying that he admitted to killing and cannibalizing his victims but he would never commit such a heinous crime as rape. Similarly, another cannibal asked his victim how he wanted to be prepared, in order to avoid offending him by preparing him the wrong way. Yes, you read that right. The person who was about to murder and cook his victim actually asked his victim how he wanted to be cooked in order to be nice.

Cannibal serial killers are rarely extremely intelligent, and few are able to avoid being caught for so long. However, some of them did manage to avoid being detected for a while. If intelligent serial killers tickle your fancy (we don’t judge we promise), you may want to head on over to the 11 Most Successful Serial Killers Who Have Never Been Caught.

America itself has been host to some of the most famous serial killers of all time, such as Ted Bundy and the Zodiac Killer. The country has also been home to some notorious cannibal serial killers.

While we considered cannibal murderers for our list of American cannibal serial killers, we faced a dilemma. How many victims do you need to have to be classified as a serial killer? Some say two, others say three, while many prefer four. We used the FBIs definition which states that a person who has committed two or more murders is considered to be a serial killer.

I caution you that the 10 American cannibal serial killers have stories which contain grisly details, which are not for the weak. Conducting research for this article was one of the most difficult tasks I’ve had to endure recently. But I persevered, and hopefully, you will too. Our list is based on the number of victims of the serial killers, with two being the bare minimum.

10. Joseph Albert Oberhansley

Joseph met the bare minimum definition to be classified as a serial killer, having committed two murders. The first was his girlfriend, whom he killed after flying into a rage from meth abuse. He also shot his mother and sister, who both lived, and then shot himself, but failed to die. He was sentenced to prison and then released 12 years later on parole, where he promptly set about finding his next victim, Tammy Jo Blanton, his new girlfriend. When she learned about his past and broke up with him, he murdered her and ate part of her brain raw while cooking and consuming her heart.

9. Austin Harrouff

One of the youngest on this list of American cannibal serial killers, Austin, is only 19 and was only indicted last month on murder charges. He is accused of the murder of a couple in Florida, John Stevens and Michelle Mishcon. This is one of the most open and shut cases I have ever seen, as when the police responded to the house, they found Austin eating the face of John Stevens. Most homicide detectives involved in the case said it was the most gruesome case they have ever seen. Harouff could face the death penalty for his crimes.

8.  Hadden Clark

A schizophrenic cross-dressing cannibal serial killer, because this list could not get weirder, Hadden Clark was convicted of the murder of two people in 1992, Michelle Dorr, aged 6 and Laura Houghteling, aged 23. Maryland police have said that he told an inmate of killing several women throughout his life. Clarke stated that after he had killed Michelle, he ate part of her remains and then he buried her.

7.   Marc Sappington

Next on our list of American cannibal serial killers is Marc Sappington that was not only schizophrenic, he regularly consumed the dangerous drug PCP, to which many bizarre crimes have been attributed. On one such binge in 2001, which lasted four days, he killed four people and ate a part of the leg of one of his victims. He was sentenced to life in prison.

6. Joe Metheny

Having claimed three victims in his career as a serial killer, Joe Metheny signed a full confession where he discussed in detail how he killed the women. Once he had killed them, he butchered their bodies and stored them in the freezer. He then claims to have opened a beef stand, where he would sell roast and pork sandwiches. According to him, the sandwiches contained the meat of his victims, a fact of which the people purchasing the sandwiches were unaware, as according to Joe, human meat tastes like pork.

5.  Alferd Packer

The oldest serial killer in this list of 10 American cannibal serial killers, Alferd Packer went on an expedition with five other men during a harsh winter in the Colorado mountains in 1874. When only he returned, he claimed that fights had broken out where people killed each other for food and admitted to consuming their flesh to survive. However, several holes were poked in his story, after which he fled and remained in hiding for several years. He was then caught and sentenced to life, which was later reduced to a mere 40 years.

4. Ottis Toole

While he claimed to have committed 108 murders with his friend Henry Lee Lucas, he was convicted of six, sentenced to two life imprisonments. After he had been arrested for arson, his stream of confessions began, though many are still unsure how much of his stories represent the truth, especially since it seemed likely that the police was using him and Lucas to reduce the unsolved crimes number.

3. Albert Fish

A cannibal serial killer who only considers children as his victims, Albert Fish, one of the American cannibal serial killers from our list, is truly one of the worse people I have ever heard about. He was also a child rapist, and would often claim that he’d had a child in every state in the US. However, it is not certain how true that statement was. It is certainly true that he engaged in rape, murder, and cannibalization of his victims, and while the exact number isn’t known, it is between three and nine. He met his end in the electric chair after being convicted of two murders.

2.  Richard Trenton Chase

While every person in this list is despicable, to say the least, we are now venturing into even darker territory. Chase would shoot his victims dead, which is not an approach serial killers generally use, as they prefer stabbing and such approaches, believing them to be more intimate. He was called ‘The Vampire of Sacremento” due to his habit of drinking the blood of his victims while also consuming their remains. He was finally apprehended, and after being sentenced to death he committed suicide in his cell by overdosing on antidepressants.

1. Jeffrey Dahmer

I am sure most of you knew he would be at the top of the 11 American cannibal serial killers. Jeffrey Dahmer achieved fame and notoriety because he not only raped and murdered 17 men and boys during a period of 13 years, but he also consumed their remains. While he was diagnosed with several mental illnesses, he was declared sane after he was apprehended and was sentenced to 16 life imprisonments. His premature end came when a fellow inmate beat him to death, a fitting end in my opinion.