Serial Killer Trivia
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167 free Serial Killer trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
45 free serial killer trivia questions with answers. This serial killer trivia quiz is built for true crime podcast listeners and documentary binge-watchers. It covers the infamous cases (Jack the Ripper, H. H. Holmes, Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, John Wayne Gacy, the Zodiac, Son of Sam, BTK, the Green River Killer, the Golden State Killer), the international ones (Harold Shipman, the Yorkshire Ripper, Andrei Chikatilo, Luis Garavito, Elizabeth Báthory) and how they were caught: a parking ticket, a floppy disk's metadata, a false number plate, a genealogy website. It also takes in the FBI profilers who coined the term, the films and series the cases inspired (Psycho, The Silence of the Lambs, Monster, Zodiac, Mindhunter, Dexter) and a few facts that even devoted listeners get wrong. Questions run from easy to genuinely obscure. Every answer has been checked against a documented reference source that appears under the explanation. The questions describe crimes only as far as needed to ask the question.
30 of 167 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Jack the Ripper's murders took place in 1888 in which district of London?
Whitechapel
The 1888 murders happened in Whitechapel, in London's East End; the killer was never identified, and the name comes from the 'Dear Boss' letter sent to the press.
Q 02The Ripper victims generally accepted as linked are known collectively by what name?
The canonical five
The canonical five are Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes and Mary Jane Kelly, killed between 31 August and 9 November 1888.
Q 03The 'From Hell' letter sent to George Lusk of the local vigilance committee arrived with what enclosed?
Half a human kidney
The box held half a human kidney; the writer claimed to have fried and eaten the other half, supposedly taken from Catherine Eddowes, whose left kidney was missing.
Q 04Which FBI agent is usually credited with coining the English term 'serial killer' in the 1970s?
Robert Ressler
Robert Ressler of the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit popularised 'serial killer' in the mid-1970s, using 'serial homicide' in lectures from 1974; a German equivalent had existed since 1930.
Q 05What term describes the interval between a serial killer's separate murders?
Cooling-off period
A cooling-off period, a gap of weeks, months or years between killings, is what most definitions use to separate serial murder from spree and mass murder.
Q 06H. H. Holmes committed his most notorious crimes in Chicago around which 1893 event?
The World's Columbian Exposition
Holmes, born Herman Webster Mudgett, ran his Chicago hotel during the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition; the 'Murder Castle' legend has grown well beyond what records support.
Q 07Ted Bundy was executed in Florida in January 1989 by what method?
Electric chair
Bundy died in Florida's electric chair on 24 January 1989 after three death sentences in two trials for the Florida murders, following two escapes from custody in Colorado.
Q 08Witnesses at several Bundy crime scenes described a man in a sling or cast driving what kind of car?
A tan Volkswagen Beetle
The 'Ted' at Lake Sammamish in July 1974 drove a tan Volkswagen Beetle and asked women to help load a sailboat; that composite broke the case open.
Q 09In January 1978 Bundy attacked students at the Chi Omega sorority house on which campus?
Florida State
The Chi Omega house was at Florida State University in Tallahassee; Bundy had arrived by bus about a week before the 15 January 1978 attack, after his second escape.
Q 10Jeffrey Dahmer, the 'Milwaukee Cannibal', was arrested in 1991 after what happened?
An intended victim escaped his apartment
He was beaten to death by a fellow inmate at a Wisconsin prison in November 1994.
Q 11John Wayne Gacy earned his 'Killer Clown' nickname because of what?
He performed as Pogo at parties
He performed as Pogo at parties and other public events before his crimes were discovered; 26 of his 33 victims were buried in the crawl space of his home outside Chicago.
Q 12Gacy's December 1978 arrest followed the disappearance of which Des Plaines teenager?
Robert Piest
Fifteen-year-old Robert Piest vanished from a Des Plaines pharmacy on 11 December 1978 after Gacy offered him a job; the search for him took police to Gacy's house.
Q 13The Zodiac Killer's crimes took place in and around which city?
San Francisco
Q 21Which crime writer coined the name 'Golden State Killer' in the 2010s and wrote the book I'll Be Gone in the Dark?
Michelle McNamara
Michelle McNamara's title came from a threat the attacker made to a victim; she died in 2016, two years before the arrest.
Q 22Gary Ridgway, the Green River Killer, was arrested in 2001 as he left work at a plant that made what?
Trucks
Ridgway was arrested on 30 November 2001 leaving the Kenworth plant in Renton, Washington, where he painted trucks; he pleaded guilty to 48 murders in 2003, and a 49th in 2011, to avoid execution.
Q 23Which actress won the Best Actress Oscar for playing Aileen Wuornos, executed in Florida in 2002, in the film Monster?
Charlize Theron
San Francisco and its Bay Area were the Zodiac's hunting ground: he attacked three couples and a cab driver, and two of his seven victims survived.
Q 14Which Zodiac cipher did amateur codebreakers finally solve in December 2020?
The 340
The 340-character cipher, mailed in November 1969, was solved in December 2020 by David Oranchak, Sam Blake and Jarl Van Eycke; the 408 had been cracked in 1969.
Q 15The 2007 film Zodiac is based on books by which cartoonist-turned-author?
Robert Graysmith
Robert Graysmith, a San Francisco Chronicle cartoonist, wrote Zodiac (1986) and Zodiac Unmasked; Jake Gyllenhaal plays him, with Mark Ruffalo as detective Toschi and Robert Downey Jr. as reporter Avery.
Q 16David Berkowitz, the 'Son of Sam', was finally traced in 1977 thanks to what?
A parking ticket
A parking ticket written on Berkowitz's Ford Galaxie near the final Brooklyn shooting led police to Yonkers; he claimed a demon spoke through a neighbour's dog, later admitting it was a hoax.
Q 17Which kind of gun earned David Berkowitz the nickname '.44 Caliber Killer'?
A Bulldog revolver
Berkowitz fired a Charter Arms Bulldog revolver chambered in .44 Special; his taunting letters to police and the press set off possibly the biggest manhunt in New York's history.
Q 18The Wichita killer BTK gave himself a name that stood for what?
Bind, torture, kill
BTK stood for 'Bind, torture, kill', Dennis Rader's own label for his method; he murdered ten people in Wichita between 1974 and 1991 and was president of his church council when arrested.
Q 19What finally identified BTK in 2005?
Metadata on a floppy disk he mailed
He had asked police whether a disk could be traced; a deleted Word document on it was marked as last modified by 'Dennis' at Christ Lutheran Church.
Q 20The Golden State Killer, arrested in 2018, had once worked in what profession?
Police officer
Joseph James DeAngelo had been a police officer in Exeter and Auburn, California, until 1979; forensic genetic genealogy identified him in 2018 as the East Area Rapist and Original Night Stalker.
Charlize Theron took the Academy Award for Best Actress as Wuornos, who had shot seven of her clients along Florida highways; Christina Ricci played her lover.
Q 24Harold Shipman, thought to have killed around 250 people, worked as what?
A family doctor
Shipman was a family doctor, a GP in Hyde near Manchester; convicted of 15 murders in 2000, he hanged himself in Wakefield prison in January 2004, the day before his 58th birthday.
Q 25Peter Sutcliffe, the 'Yorkshire Ripper', was finally arrested in Sheffield in 1981 for what offence?
Driving with false number plates
The investigation had been derailed by hoax letters and a tape from a man later nicknamed 'Wearside Jack'.
Q 26Andrei Chikatilo, the 'Butcher of Rostov', was executed in 1994 in which country?
Russia
Chikatilo was shot in Novocherkassk, Russia, on 14 February 1994; the Ukrainian-born killer had murdered at least 52 people across the Soviet Union, and his hunt inspired the film Citizen X.
Q 27In which country did Luis Garavito, nicknamed 'La Bestia', commit his crimes?
Colombia
Garavito, 'La Bestia', killed boys across Colombia through the 1990s; arrested in April 1999 after a victim escaped, he confessed that October to well over 100 murders.
Q 28Countess Elizabeth Báthory, the 'Blood Countess', was walled up in a castle in which kingdom?
Hungary
Čachtice Castle, where Báthory was confined until her death in 1614, lay in the Kingdom of Hungary (now Slovakia); the blood-bathing tale was first written down in 1729, over a century later.
Q 29Belle Gunness lured most of her victims to her Indiana farm using what?
Personal advertisements
Gunness placed personal advertisements in Norwegian-language newspapers seeking well-off suitors, then killed them at her La Porte farm; she apparently died in a farmhouse fire in 1908, but her fate was never confirmed.
Q 30Ed Gein inspired Norman Bates in Psycho and which Silence of the Lambs character?
Buffalo Bill
Buffalo Bill's suit of women's skin echoes Gein's crimes, discovered at his Plainfield, Wisconsin farm in 1957; Leatherface from The Texas Chain Saw Massacre also drew on him.