People kill for many different reasons, but people who kill for the thrill of it usually have one thing in common; they all like the power they feel after committing the act. Many killers liken this feeling to a sort of high they get and before long they can’t get enough.
It’s human nature to try to explain things we don’t understand. Some killers realize these feelings are a sort of crisscrossed brain chemistry that causes them to derive pleasure from their heinous acts, while others attribute these feelings to an otherworldly spiritual connection. Today we’ll look at killers who believed killing would give them supernatural powers.
Ahmad Suradji
Ahmad Suradji was an Indonesian serial killer who, with the help of his three wives, began killing local women. Police discovered he had killed a total of 42 women over the course of 11 years. All of the women had been buried up to the waist and then strangled as part of the ritual. Suradji would then suck the women’s saliva out of their mouths, because he believed that drinking the women’s saliva would give him more power. He was sentenced to death by firing squad and executed in 2008.
Elizabeth Bathory
The Hungarian vampire killer is perhaps the most notable on our list. It is believed that Elizabeth Bathory killed hundreds of young women between 1585 and 1609. Today we know the legends of her killing these women in order to bathe in their blood so she could remain forever youthful in appearance. Unfortunately, the lines between fact and fiction begin to blur in the story of Elizabeth Bathory, who some even claim that she may have been part of a larger conspiracy to overthrow her rule. We may never know the scope of Bathory’s crimes or her true motives behind the serial murders.
Adolfo Constanzo
Serial killer Adolfo Constanzo became heavily interested in the practice of Palo Mayombe by the time he made connections to some of Mexico’s most infamous drug cartels. Constanzo would seek out cartel rivals and subject them to ritualistic murders because he believed these murders would give himself and the cartels he was working for greater power and ward off law enforcement. Eventually political pressure forced police to investigate Constanzo. He fled to Mexico City, where he opened fire at police responding to an unrelated report. By the time police reached Constanzo he was already dead, after ordering one of his other associates to shoot him.
Adrian Lim
The Toa Payoh ritual murders were carried out in Singapore by a man named Adrian Lim. Lim claimed he was a medium and worked as a simple conman, convincing dozens of women to hand over cash and have sex with him in exchange for promises of endless beauty, wealth, and power. Eventually police began to catch up with his game, but by then Lim decided to go a step further. He and his two wives lured a number of young girls to Lim’s apartment to where the trio would drug, rape, and murder the girls. There was evidence that the girls may have been sacrifices to the goddess Kali, but Lim and his wives refused that theory. Both Lim and his two wives were sentenced to death by hanging in 1983.
Victor Alias and Jose Reyes
Two Texas teens were reportedly involved in the Satanic ritual killing of a 15-year-old girl. Victor Alias and Jose Reyes were able to lead 15-year-old Corriann Cervantes to an abandoned apartment complex. There the boys proceeded to rape, murder, and mutilate the young woman. The boys later explained that their motive behind the murder was so they could sell their souls to Satan. Both boys received an automatic life sentence for their heinous crime.