Last year, the Alaska-based serial killer whom I dubbed the most meticulous serial killer of his generation. Keyes was initially arrested in March 2012 for “,” after he was caught in Texas using a debit card that belonged to a missing Alaska woman named Samantha Koenig. Before he, Keyes had admitted to killing Koenig and seven other people across the country, was suspected in three other murders, and had given the authorities a grim glimpse into his working method. Keyes would allegedly fly to one city, then rent a car and drive to another. Once he arrived at his destination, he would choose a random victim in a remote location, murder the person, and leave—sometimes, the FBI believes, accompanied by his victim’s corpse, which he would bury in another state. He stashed “crime caches” across the country—cash, weapons, and body-disposal tools. He only killed strangers.

He did everything possible to avoid detection, and, indeed, would never have been suspected in many of these murders if he hadn’t implicated himself. (Yes, it is very, very weird that this extremely careful man was caught after deciding to use Koenig's debit card, an uncharacteristically sloppy decision.).

List of serial killers by number of victims. A serial killer is a person who murders. This list is a compilation of modern serial killers currently with the.