
Wisconsin’s Lesser Known Serial Killers
Halloween is a fun time for many, it brings out our ability to be scared in a safe way. One of the many ways people choose to spook themselves? Remembering Wisconsin’s illicit (and gruesome) history of producing some of the country’s most famous serial killers. Here is a list dating back a 70 years. Not everyone on this list is the most famous, some are lesser known, but that adds to the mystery of Wisconsin’s illicit past.
Ed Gein, “The Butcher of Plainfield,”
committed two murders in 1954 and 1957 in Plainfield, WI , his fame comes from murder and the excavation of corpses.
Gein used pieces of women’s bodies to decorate his home. When he was caught for his second murder in 1957 police found a lampshade made from human skin, bowls made of human skulls and even more gruesome entities.
Edward Wayne Edwards
Known to have killed 5 people
Edwards was original tried and jailed for an Ohio boy’s murder, but later convicted for the “sweetheart murders”
Walter E. Ellis, “Milwaukee North Side Strangler,”
raped and strangled seven African American women in Milwaukee from 1986 to 2007.
Chai Vang
During a hunting trip , Vang trespassed on someones property, when confronted he murdered the land owner.
Terry Ratzmann
Mass shooting at a church in Brookfield WI
Radcliffe Haughton
Shot and killed two people at his wife’s spa in Brookfield WI
Jeffrey Dahmer, a.k.a the “Milwaukee Cannibal,”
Most popular Wisconsin serial killer
Christopher Scarver
Convicted for the murder of Jeffrey Dahmer in prison.