It doesn't get much darker than killers inspiring killers. Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we’re examining ten of the most famous copycats who modeled their crimes after other killers.
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00:00We'd heard his surname that many times. Like, he did brag about it too.
00:03Yeah.
00:03Like, he looked up to his uncle and he'd made that clear.
00:06Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're examining 10 of the most famous copycats
00:10who modeled their crimes after other killers.
00:22Peter Sutcliffe, inspired by Jack the Ripper.
00:25As West Yorkshire police launched a second murder hunt,
00:28newspapers were already calling the killer Jack the Ripper.
00:32Almost 100 years after Jack the Ripper terrorized London in 1888,
00:36another Ripper took to the seedy streets of England.
00:39Unlike his model, this one was eventually caught.
00:42He was Peter Sutcliffe, a truck driver who murdered at least 13 women between 1975 and 1980.
00:48Like Jack the Ripper, he primarily targeted sex workers,
00:51mostly in the red-light district of West Yorkshire.
00:54Undercover police tracked half a million car movements through six northern cities,
01:00looking for men who went looking for prostitutes in more than one red-light district.
01:04Due to the similarities of the cases, the press soon dubbed him the Yorkshire Ripper,
01:08and one famous hoaxer even sent a letter to the Daily Mail pretending to be Sutcliffe,
01:13signing it Jack the Ripper.
01:15Sutcliffe was finally caught in 1981 after a bungled investigation,
01:19and was sentenced to life in prison, where he died in 2020.
01:24It's very hard to explain to people who are not from this part of the world
01:28the effect that this started to have on people.
01:34This Iranian serial killer is the most prolific in the country's history,
01:38with 67 known victims having surpassed Ashgar the murderer.
01:42It's no surprise that he was influenced by the latter.
01:45Ashgar murdered 33 people in the early 20th century before he was finally apprehended in 1934.
01:51When asked to give a reason for his crimes, he claimed,
01:53quote,
01:54"'These are the enemies of society. Because of that, I have killed them.'"
01:57His crime spree influenced Hoshang Amini, who later cited Ashgar as an inspiration,
02:02and claimed a similar motive of wanting to rid society of whom he deemed corrupt and evil.
02:08He was caught in 1962 and publicly executed the following year.
02:16One upmanship is present in most industries, including, evidently, serial killing.
02:21In 1996, the beast of Ukraine, Anatoly Onoprienko,
02:24was apprehended and confessed to murdering 52 people.
02:28They checked the man's credentials. He was 36-year-old Anatoly Onoprienko.
02:34His infamous crime spree supposedly inspired a man named Yevgeny Balan,
02:38who desired to claim a higher body count.
02:40He didn't even come close, as he took the lives of nine people
02:44before he was caught in September 2011.
02:46One of his victims was Svetlana Strysh, Balan's own stepdaughter whom he stalked,
02:50assaulted, and strangled.
02:52He was finally caught when a boxer stumbled across a crime in progress,
02:55punched Balan, and held him down until police arrived.
02:59He was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison.
03:16Some of the more adventurous among you may have seen the famous
03:19Three Guys, One Hammer video taken by the Dnepropetrovsk Maniacs,
03:23which depicts the pair killing Sergei Yatsenko.
03:26It was almost certainly seen by Russian teenagers Artem Anufriev and Nikita Litkin.
03:31According to the press, their crimes were heavily influenced by the Dnepropetrovsk Maniacs,
03:36and they, in turn, were given a similar moniker, the Academy Maniacs.
03:40The pair murdered six and injured nine throughout their crime spree,
03:50which came to an end when Litkin's uncle found video evidence of a murder on Litkin's camera.
03:55They had filmed themselves just as the Dnepropetrovsk Maniacs had done before them.
03:59Both were sentenced to prison, and Litkin took his own life in November 2021.
04:04Matthew Mallett, inspired by Ivan Mallett.
04:08Sometimes killing seems to run in the family.
04:20Ivan Mallett is one of the most notorious killers in Australian history,
04:24having murdered seven tourists in and around Belangelo State Forest.
04:27The case was heavily covered by the media,
04:30and a movie called Wolf Creek was modeled after the so-called backpacker murders.
04:38Years later, Ivan's great-nephew Matthew Mallett murdered his friend David Octorlone,
04:47also inside Belangelo State Forest.
04:49After killing Octorlone, he reportedly told another friend,
04:56Unsurprisingly, the court later argued that he was,
05:01and he was given a prison sentence of 43 years.
05:08He's just so cold-blooded, callous, and heartless.
05:15We return to Russia for the story of Anushervan Rachmanov,
05:18a man suspected of killing seven people in the mid-2010s.
05:22Decades prior, Vladimir Ianyasyan killed a number of people by posing as a gas inspector.
05:27He pretended to be an employee of the Russian gas company Mozgaz,
05:30and with this guise, would enter apartments and kill the inhabitants.
05:34Ianyasyan was executed in 1964.
05:37Exactly 50 years later, Rachmanov began his killing spree,
05:41also posing as a Mozgaz employee and breaking into apartments to terrorize the occupants.
05:46The press even named him Mozgaz II, acknowledging the obvious influence of Ianyasyan.
05:51Rachmanov was eventually caught and confessed to his crimes,
05:54but he took his own life before he could be tried in court.
05:57Luo Shubiao had kleptomania, meaning he couldn't resist stealing items
06:04and was in and out of Chinese labor camps for theft.
06:07In the late 1980s, he began watching videos of graphic violence
06:11and developed a fascination with Lum Kor-Wan,
06:13a serial killer from Hong Kong who murdered four people in 1982.
06:17According to a confession later made by Luo,
06:20he became deeply interested in Lum's grotesque M.O.
06:23and developed a deep desire to emulate it.
06:25So he did exactly that.
06:27Luo murdered 18 people throughout the early 90s,
06:30often mutilating their bodies just as Lum had done before him.
06:33And with one prior murder in 1977, this brought his total body count to 19.
06:39He was convicted of his crimes and executed in 1995.
06:49The Tylenol Killer Copycats, inspired by the Chicago Tylenol murders.
06:54Seven people were dead because someone had laced capsules
06:56of extra-strength Tylenol with cyanide.
06:59And there was fear more people, more innocent people, would die.
07:03The greater Chicago area was struck by a horrifically random crime in the fall of 1982.
07:09Someone had intentionally laced bottles of Tylenol with potassium cyanide,
07:13leading to the deaths of seven people.
07:15The perpetrator was never caught,
07:16and the killings both impacted sales of Halloween candy
07:19and led to the widespread adoption of tamper-resistant packaging.
07:23Unfortunately, it also led to a high number of copycat crimes.
07:27In the years following the initial incident,
07:29there were many reports of people being killed
07:31and grievously injured by tampered capsules,
07:33most of which had been laced with cyanide.
07:36This, in turn, led the pharmaceutical industry
07:38to abandon traditional gelatin capsules in favor of more modern tablets.
07:42We want the people to be aware of this,
07:43and that they probably shouldn't take extra-strength Tylenol at this time
07:47until we can find out the extent of the contamination.
07:49Derek Brown, inspired by Jack the Ripper.
07:52Excuse me, miss.
07:55Peter Sutcliffe was not the only killer who modeled himself after Jack the Ripper.
08:00There was also Derek Brown, a newspaper delivery driver who,
08:03according to the courts, sought notoriety through killing.
08:06He murdered two women, and would have likely killed many more
08:09had he not been caught.
08:10Brown was greatly influenced by Jack the Ripper,
08:13and copied many aspects of his M.O.
08:15One of his victims was a sex worker.
08:17He butchered both of their bodies,
08:19and most telling of all, he killed them both in Whitechapel,
08:22the same area of East London in which Jack operated.
08:25Unlike Jack, Brown was eventually caught
08:27following a thorough police investigation,
08:30and was sentenced to life in prison.
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08:46Heriberto Seda, inspired by the Zodiac Killer.
08:50Heriberto Seda was active in New York throughout the early 90s,
08:53killing three people and injuring a further six.
08:56After each crime, he would send a taunting letter
08:59to the police and media,
09:00and would even include his own personal cryptograms.
09:04Sound familiar?
09:05Yep, it's the Zodiac all over again.
09:07The note had basically more indications of the three priors
09:12as well as birth sign.
09:14In fact, the correlations were so obvious
09:16that New York police even floated the possibility
09:18that it was the Zodiac.
09:20Funnily enough, it wasn't an investigation that brought down Seda,
09:23but a domestic dispute.
09:25Seda's half-sister called the police
09:26after he shot her in the buttocks,
09:28and Seda closed his handwritten statement
09:30with the same symbol he used in the taunting letters.
09:33Police made the connection,
09:34and Seda was thrown in prison for 230 years.
09:38Over six years, Eddie Seda,
09:41Eddie Seda, the copycat Zodiac killer,
09:45stalked the streets of New York City
09:47in search of easy targets.
09:49Can you think of any more examples?
09:51Let us know in the comments below.