Wikipedia/Wikipedia
Serial killer Lizzie Halliday is known to have killed at least five people, she became the first woman sentenced to die in the electric chair before her sentence was commuted.
The mind of a serial killer continues to baffle both the general public and experts.
The horrific crimes of various serial killers have been documented around the world at different points of history.
And a few notorious cases hit the streets of New York City.
Here are five of the most infamous serial killers who have targeted victims in the five boroughs:
Lizzie Halliday
The New York Times described her as the “worst woman on earth” in 1918.
Lizzie Halliday was known to have murdered at least five people, but likely killed many more.
Over the course of the last few decades of the 1800s, she was married to five different men. Two of her husbands died within a few years of marriage.
“Whether these men died natural deaths or were murdered, is not known,” according to the Times in 1894.
She left her fifth marriage to Vermont resident Charles Playstel , and travelled to Philadelphia, where she burned down a saloon run by two friends, Margaret and Sarah Jane McQuillan for the insurance money.
After spending two years in prison, she married Paul Halliday, a farmer in Sullivan County, New York. She burned down their house and barn. Paul Halliday disappeared shortly after. A search warrant was issued, and the bodies of the McQuillan girls were found buried nearby.
Soon Paul Halliday’s body was found as well, and Lizzie was charged with all three murders.
In 1984, she was the first woman to be sentenced to the electric chair in New York. However, she was declared insane and sent to a mental institution. While there, she killed a nurse by stabbing her 200 times with a pair of scissors.
Halliday died in 1918.
Joel Rifkin
Murder suspect Joel Rifkin is escorted by State Troopers Sean Ruane and Deborah Spaargaren out of State Police Headquarters in East Farmingdale, Long Island.
Hailing from East Meadow, Long Island, Joel Rifkin was an unemployed landscaper who jumped from job to job.
He was arrested in 1993 and found guilty of killing 17 women, all prostitutes, in a four-year span.
Rifkin dismembered the body parts of his victims and disposed of them in various areas throughout New York, including the East River and a canal in Brooklyn.
“I dumped them hundreds of miles apart,” Rifkin told the Daily News in 2010.
He was caught after police pulled him over on the Southern State Parkway for not having a license plate and noticed a foul smell coming from the trunk.
The stench was from the decomposing body of Rifkin’s last victim, prostitute and dancer Tiffany Bresciani — who was dating David Rubinstein of the hardcore punk band Reagan Youth.
Rifkin said he was “surprised (he) didn’t get caught sooner.”
Robert Schulman
BRUCE COTLER/AP
Robert Shulman, left, is led from a Patchogue, N.Y., police station Monday, April 8, 1996 in handcuffs following his arrest in the murders of prostitutes whose dismembered bodies were found in garbage bins.
Hicksville native Robert Schulman was convicted of killing five female prostitutes between 1991 and 1996.
A formal postal worker, he went on a terrifying spree of murdering and dismembering these women.
Detectives found Schulman by tracking his blue Cadillac, which tipsters had reported seeing near the murder scenes.
He was sentenced to die by lethal injection in 1999 for one murder he committed after New York State reinstated the death penalty in 1995.
According to The New York Times, in a statement before the sentencing, Schulman said: “I am not a coward. God knows I did not do this, and that gives me peace of mind.”
His sentence was ultimately reduced to life in prison because New York’s death penalty law was not in effect when he committed his previous murders.
He died in prison in April 2006.
Long Island Serial Killer
John Roca New York Daily News
Suffolk County Police Helicopter lands on parking lot of Oak Beach Inn during investigation of 4 bodies found along Ocean Parkway in Oak beach.
Also known as the Gilgo Beach Killer, this mystery serial killer on Long Island has not yet been apprehended.
Ten bodies have been found near the south shore beach in Suffolk County between December 2010 and April 2011.
Some believe that the last known possible victim was Shannon Gilbert, who was an escort in the area. Her disappearance in May 2010 led police to the remains of Melissa Barthelemy, a prostitute from the Bronx who had been missing for over a year.
Gilbert was never officially linked to the murders. Officials believe she ran away from the home of a client and possibly accidently drowned in a marsh.
David Berkowitz “Son of Sam”
Daily News Photo
Police escort handcuffed Son of Sam suspect David Berkowitz into headquarters in lower Manhattan.
Better known by his nickname, Son of Sam, Berkowitz was a postal employee who killed six people and wounded seven others with a .44-caliber revolver in the city during the 1970s.
He unleashed a massive panic in the city, targeting single women and couples.
He got the name Son of Sam after leaving a note at a crime scene. It included the phrase: “I am a monster. I am the Son of Sam.”
He had previously been called the .44-Caliber Killer in the press.
He was eventually arrested in 1977 after a witness saw him at his last crime scene in a car with a parking ticket on it. The police tracked him down because not many tickets had been given out that day in the area.
He later told police that he had been instructed to kill by his neighbor Sam Carr’s dog, Harvey, who communicated demonic messages.
jgolding@dailynews.com
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Lifestyle – NY Daily News