Young and resourceful killers of the 20th century

Nathan Freudenthal Leopold, Jr. (November 19, 1904 – August 30, 1971) and Richard A. Loeb (June 11, 1905 – January 28, 1936), commonly known as Leopold and Loeb. Two wealthy university students who killed a younger boy in 1924. Leopold and Loeb were 19 and 18 years old at the time of the murder. They believed themselves to be Nietzschean supermen: Their high intellect should make them capable of committing the perfect crime without apprehension. The story inspired the 1948 Hitchcock movie Rope. Read more about Leopold and Loeb at: Wikipedia leopoldandloeb.com

Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer (May 21, 1960 – November 28, 1994). American serial killer, necrophiliac and cannibal, who murdered 17 men and boys between 1978 and 1991. The majority of the murders occurring between 1989 and 1991, and most of Dahmer's victims were homosexual black men.. Jeffrey Dahmer was born into the white middle class, and as the typical serial killer he reportedly dissected already dead animals as a child. Despite his good looks, Dahmer also struggled with low self esteem and thereby also substance abuse. He committed his first murder at the age of 18, picking up a 19 year old hitchhiker. After several drinks Dahmer killed him, because he "didn't want him to leave." Dahmer attended Ohio State University, but dropped out already after one term. The he signed up with the army, but was released after only two years because of his excessive drinking. In August 1982 he was arrested for exposing himself at a state fair. Four years later he was accused of masturbating in public and sentenced to a year in prison. In 1988 Dahmer was arrested for sexually fondling a 13 year old boy. For this he served one year in a work release camp and was required to register as a sex offender. He convinced the judge that he only needed   psychological help, and he was released with a five year probation on good behavior. Shortly thereafter, he began the series of murders that would end with his arrest in 1991. The summer of 1991, Dahmer lured another black man into his home. The victim escaped and managed to alert a police car. The officers who were led back to Dahmer's apartment, uncovered multiple photographs of murdered victims and human remains. Several corpses were stored in acid-filled vats, severed heads were found in his refrigerator and implements for the construction of an altar of candles and human skulls were found in one of the closets. Dahmer admitted to eating the biceps of one of his victims, whose skeleton he also kept, noting that human flesh "tasted like beef" to him. Dahmer was found guilty and sane on 15 counts of murder and sentenced to 15 life terms totaling 943 years in prison, one of the harshest sentences ever imposed in Wisconsin. During the imprisonment Dahmer became more and more religious and ultimately declared himself a reborn Christian. However, in   November 1994, Dahmer and another inmate were brutally beaten to death with an iron bar from the prison gym by another inmate. The Jeffrey Dahmer murders has since inspired the pop culture, like metal lyrics, novels and movies. Read more: At BBC At Wikipedia About the 1993 film The secret life: Jeffrey Dahmer and the 2002 psychothriller Dahmer

Patrick "Pat" Bateman (October 1962 - 2003?) is a fictional character and the narrator of the novel American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis. He is also appearing in Glamorama and Lunar Park. Bateman comes from a wealthy family. He graduated from Harvard University in 1984, and then Harvard Business School two years later. Shortly after he moved to New York City, where he works at Wall Street and lives on the Upper West Side. Bateman is handsome, well-groomed and intelligent. He is also a serial killer who murders a variety of people, from models and colleagues to bums and prostitutes. The actions, including torture murder and cannibalism, are described in graphic details. Read more about Patrick Bateman and American Psycho at: Wikipedia Bret Easton Ellis´ official website

John Ausonius (July 12, 1953 -), born Wolfgang Alexander Zaugg, also known in the media as Lasermannen ("the Laser Man"). Swedish convicted murderer, bank robber and attempted serial killer. From August 1991 to February 1992 he shot eleven coloured people and killed one in the Stockholm and Uppsala areas. Initially he used a rifle equipped with a laser sight - hence his nickname - and later switched to a revolver. The Laser Man was arrested in June 1992 and sentenced to life in prison. Wolfgang Zaugg grew up as a child of German and Swiss immigrants. Because of his black hair and dark complexion he was bullied in his youth. As an adult, he dyed his hair blonde and legally changed his name, first to John (Wolfgang Alexander) Stannerman and later to John Ausonius to disguise his non-Swedish last name. He went to the private German school in Stockholm, but dropped out. Later he completed secondary school in an adult education programme. After a couple of years of unsuccesful studies he also dropped out of the Royal Institute of Technology. Stannermann/Ausonius hated Communists, Social Democrats and immigrants - and he dreamed about getting rich. After working as a taxi-driver, he started trading in stocks and bonds. He developed a talent for playing the market and quickly gathered a rather large fortune. He adopted the yuppie lifestyle, and by the late 1980's he had a luxurious apartment. Poorly chosen investments unraveled his fortune, and he fell into a gambling-addiction on a trip to Germany. At this time he turned to robbing banks for money, in order to maintain his yuppie lifestyle. He performed more than 18 robberies, all in an almost identical fashion. Ausonius, who had become a Swedish citizen in 1979, also hated immigrants and foreigners. He started to look for immigrant criminals to kill. He soon got tired of this and decided to simply kill any immigrant. Thus he hoped to scare them all out of the country. The Laser Man also felt that killing immigrants would turn the attention of the Swedish police away from his career as a bankrobber ... The journalist Gellert Tamas wrote Lasermannen - en berättelse om Sverige (2002), which became a bestseller. In 2005, the book was adapted into a play and the same year SVT produced a three-part TV miniseries. Read more at SVT.