The ’70s and ’80s were the peak of what people now call the serial killer era — a time when names like Bundy, Gacy, and the Night Stalker weren’t the subjects of Netflix documentaries but the reason people locked their doors. So when crime historian u/Cable_Difficultasked those who lived through it what those years were really like, the stories poured in. Here are 33 of their accounts:
1. “I was living in southwest Seattle during the ‘Ted’ years. My older cousin knew one of his victims. It seems like as soon as he was gone, the Green River Killer [Gary Ridgway] was at work.”
2. “What’s wild is that Ted Bundy actually gave his name as Ted. His Volkswagen was spotted as a suspect vehicle by multiple people, and the artist’s rendering looked exactly like Ted Bundy. Even his own girlfriend reported him as a possible suspect.”
—u/i-love-mexican-c0ke
3. “It was a weird time to be a young girl in Seattle. In the window between Bundy’s arrest and Ridgway’s arrest, there was this strange feeling that anyone — even your neighbor — could have committed the ongoing murders, and you might never suspect them. I wasn’t allowed to walk certain places without a sibling, a friend, or our very large dog. In this pre-cellphone era, we had to call home every so often, carrying quarters for the pay phones along our routes.”
4. “I was in the University of Washington’s criminology department during the Green River days. The police department would gather us up to do basic crime-scene checks. We’d stand in a long line and look forward, right, left. If we saw anything, we’d put a flag down. Then we’d take a step and start the process all over again.”
—u/bogeysbabe
5. “The Night Stalker. A close friend was one of his suspected victims.”
6. “I was in Southern California during the Night Stalker years. I just remember not having air conditioning and it being a super hot summer. Our parents WOULD NOT let us sleep with the window open, out of fear. I was so glad when he was caught.”
—u/Away-Ad3792
7. “I remember lying in bed at night during the Night Stalker years, sweating, worrying that any sound was him getting ready to somehow get in. I remember we were at a restaurant when he was caught, and everyone started watching the TV above the bar and cheering.”
—u/ntrrrmilf
8. “He had a fascination with brown and yellow houses. We lived in the same neighborhood as one of the Night Stalker’s victims. Guess what color our house was?”
—u/slimkermit1
9. “The Hillside Stranglers and the Night Stalker, Richard Ramirez. Ramirez was in my neighborhood in La Habra. I worked at the Licorice Pizza in Whittier, the first computer system I ever used. We rented videos, and someone had noted not to rent to Richard Ramirez. Do you have any idea how many guys are named Richard Ramirez in Whittier and La Habra? We’d call each other to make sure everyone had their windows closed and locked.”
10. “I remember Richard Ramirez, the Night Stalker, as a kid. When he got off a bus back to Los Angeles, he saw his picture in the newspaper and ran into a neighborhood. The locals kicked his ass, and he got arrested. It was a scary time. Everyone started locking their doors. I can’t believe we didn’t before that, but we didn’t.”
—u/Playful_Question538
11. “I was a teenager in Canada when Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka were arrested. When I saw his mugshot, it completely changed my idea of what a ‘bad guy’ looked like. I remember thinking that if I’d met him and he had offered to buy me a drink, I’d have said yes. It totally freaked me out.”
12. “I lived on the other side of the city during the Scarborough Rapist years, but if I came home on the bus after dark, the driver would let me off right in front of my building. He watched until I got in, too.”
—u/Coffee_Crisp_333
13. “The Green River Killer’s brother was a coworker of mine. When Gary Ridgway was finally arrested, it was a total trip to see his face plastered all over the front page. The resemblance to my coworker was uncanny, way more than most siblings. My coworker never claimed Gary was innocent, but he also never admitted he thought Gary was guilty.”
14. “Green River Killer. He ended up being my soccer teammate’s uncle. Her dad was always kind of weird too, but not serial-killer weird.”
—u/throneofthornes
15. “John Wayne Gacy — not technically the same, but he was the boogeyman for sure growing up.”
16. “I worked with a woman who was married to one of the guards on John Wayne Gacy’s death row. She said the fan mail was disturbing. Yes, the content of it, but also the fact that there was fan mail to begin with.”
—u/wholesomeinsanity
17. “John Wayne Gacy used to pick up guys in a bar my mom bartended in. She told me he was picking up ‘trick boys.'”
—u/Ancient-Ad-2474
18. “My dad had to supervise the removal of bodies from John Wayne Gacy’s basement. It was on the news every night in Chicago, and my dad was always on TV. Years later, my daughter did a paper on Gacy for a high school class, watched a documentary, and yelled out, ‘Is this Grandpa?’ It was weird to see my dad young, in a shearling coat, with ’70s sideburns. I know it affected him.”
—u/Quiet_Day1912
19. “Ed Kemper was so scary because he seemed so normal when he was talking. I watched an interview and thought he was likable! I don’t think he’d set off alarms if I met him. It’s like he has two parts that are aware of each other but independent: the rational, well-socialized one, and the angry, cruel one.”
20. “BTK — ‘Bind, Torture, Kill,’ the name he gave himself. I was a kid in the ’70s, and one generic fear was that if you were in Wichita and not behaving, BTK would grab you. He lived in the town where my sister and I babysat our little cousins, and one of those cousins even worked with him when he was a dogcatcher.”
21. “Wayne Williams was our boogeyman.”
—u/StinkieBritches
22. “I was in elementary school in Sandy Springs during the Atlanta Child Murders. I remember Channel 11 giving plastic whistles to all the schools to hand out. I wore mine on a piece of yarn when I walked home from school each day.”
—u/azalea24601
23. “I was only 10 during the Son of Sam killings, but all young women were afraid for a year or so. Growing up in the Bronx, I used to drive by the spot where two of the victims were killed, and I later lived two blocks from where Donna Lauria was shot. All his victims deserve to be remembered.”
24. “I lived in Los Angeles when Charles Manson got arrested, and people were freaking out. Gun sales exploded. Everybody locked their doors. It was tense.”
25. “Bob Berdella, the Kansas City Butcher, who tortured and killed six men in the ’80s. He owned a little shop at the Westport Flea Market called Bob’s Bizarre Bazaar. My roommate and I used to eat lunch and shop there. He was always very nice. My roommate had pierced her own ear, and it was a little inflamed. Bob noticed, gave her some antiseptic, and told her to be careful or it would get infected. A week later, his shop was closed — he’d been arrested. We were shocked when the details came out.”
26. “My area’s signature serial killer was the Trailside Killer, who murdered hikers in the Santa Cruz Mountains and around the Bay Area in the late ’70s and early ’80s. My dad was super permissive and would see my sister and me off with a cheery ‘Don’t get murdered!’ when we’d head to the nearby state park to play in the river or hike.”
—u/HBJones1056
27. “When I was very young, maybe 4 or 5, I overheard my parents talking about the Boston Strangler. We lived in the area, and my dad was worried about my mother’s safety while he was traveling for work. It scared me to death, and I began a nightly ritual of praying to God that no one would kill us while we slept.”
28. “The Oakland County Child Killer in Michigan. My older brother was friends with one of the boys who was kidnapped and murdered. The killer has still never been caught. The area was on high alert. The police came to my school, took Polaroids of all our faces, and fingerprinted us for records. My mom would never let me out of her sight.”
—u/DrapersSmellyGlove
29. “Barbara Mackle! For whatever reason, I was allowed to watch the TV movie about her 1968 kidnapping by Gary Steven Krist in second grade. Being buried alive with only a small tube to breathe through — that was my fear until, thankfully, peer obsession and hormones took over in middle school.”
—u/bettertheless
30. “I’ve always remembered Barbara Mackle — the intense search, the pipe in the ground. I looked up her kidnapper, Gary Steven Krist, and it’s wild: he was sentenced to life in 1969 but was paroled after 10 years. He then received a pardon to attend medical school and practiced medicine in Indiana before his license was revoked in 2003.”
—u/regrettablyAnnoying
31. “Danny Rolling, the Gainesville Ripper, butchered five of my neighbors. I was a University of Florida student the same age as the victims — one of whom, Christa Hoyt, lived two streets over from me. The other students in my building went home. Every night, my mother would call the landline to beg me to do the same: ‘He could be walking up your stairs right now. He could be crouched in those woods, waiting for you to hang up.’ I stayed. I walked to completely empty classes in an empty town.”
“My professors, instead of teaching, would come sit at a desk next to mine, and we’d chain-smoke cigarettes. My religion professor brought in beer one day; my Russian professor brought his wife and pastries, and they’d ask me to explain what was happening: ‘Is this the kind of thing that goes on in America?’ Each day, the Plaza of the Americas emptied of students and filled up with reporters and camera crews, their makeup melting in the central Florida humidity.”
—u/Downtown_Statement87
32. “In the 1980s, I took a business trip to San Francisco, and on the flight there, I read the book Zodiac. My flight landed very late, I got a cab, and as we approached the drop-off, I realized it was at the intersection where the Zodiac Killer was known to have caught a cab. To say my head was on a swivel would be an understatement. And separately, I was once hospitalized in eastern Pennsylvania and nearly died of sudden complications the night before I was to be released. Over a decade later, I found out that Charles Cullen — the nurse who murdered his patients — was working at my hospital while I was there.”
Whether you lived through this era or came after it, is there a true crime case that shaped how you or your family saw the world? Share your experience in the comments below.
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