Killer Queens is the definitive true crime anthology series that investigates the murderous psychology of the world'smost notorious gay serial killers. Each episode will focus on a new ‘Killer Queen’ and be an in depth biography of theirlife, their killings and their victims. Homosexual mass murderers are not a new phenomenon. History is littered with sadistic, homosexual tyrants - from the Roman Emperor Tiberius to French Aristocrat Gilles de Rey. The orgies of cruelty and carnage instigated by such menaces, served as spectacles of terror which consolidated their power by engendering mass fear. But the trauma inflicted by serial killers that have targeted gay men is part of our history. Knowing your history is about understanding the bad stuff as well as the good stuff and so in this true crime anthology we investigate the gay murderers’ handbook, their motivations, their victims and their methodologies. The earliest examples of modern gay serial killers were German, active after World War I. Fritz Haarmann was born in 1879, began raping and killing adolescent lads in 1918, and was decapitated for twenty-four murders in 1925. Karl Denke, sexually molested and murdered, 20 to 30 young men and boys, between 1918 and 1924. Both of these were cannibal killers, who sold human flesh as pork (and ate it themselves).
SUGGESTED UK CASEBOOK
Dennis Andrew Nilsen (born November 23, 1945 in Fraserburgh Scotland) Soon to be the subject of a new ITV Drama featuring David Tennant, Dennis lived and killed in the Cricklewood and Muswell Hill areas of London. He is known to have killed at least 16 men and boys between 1978 and 1983. Most of his victims were students or homeless men. He picked them all up in bars and brought them to his house either for sex or just for company, invariably drinking heavily throughout the evening. Nilsen strangled and drowned his victims during the night, waking up with little memory of what he had done. He used his butchering skills, which he gained from his time as a cook in the army, to help him dispose of the bodies. He was eventually caught after his disposal of a body blocked his household drains and drew the attention of the police.
Robert John Maudsley (born June 1953 in Liverpool) is responsible for the murders of four people. A former rent boy, he committed three of these murders in prison after receiving a life sentence for a single murder. He is alleged to have eaten part of the brain of one of three men he killed in prison, which has earned him the nickname "Hannibal the Cannibal" among the British press. In 1983 Maudelsey was deemed to dangerous for a normal cell, so authorities built a two-cell unit in the basement of Wakefield Prison. He remains in solitary confinement 25 years on, and once a day he is allowed out of his cell for one hour's exercise in a yard 20 feet long by 12 feet wide. Every move he made was always under watchful eye of at least five guards.
Michael Lupo (born 1953 Italy - Died 1995) was convicted of killing four men and two attempted murders during 1986, a former soldier he ran a flower shop in Kensington. In 1987, at the Old Bailey, Lupo pleaded guilty to all charges and was given four life sentences, plus 14 years. There were investigations from a number of cities Lupo had visited in the early 1980s, such as New York and Berlin, to see if he was responsible for unsolved homicides in those areas, although no such evidence of any further crimes committed by Lupo in these or any other locations came to light. In February 1995, Lupo died in prison from an AIDS related illness. He had contracted the disease shortly before his killing spree and he claimed that finding this out was what had set him off on his rampage.
Peter Moore (born 1940 in Rhyl, Wales) murdered four men in 1995. Between September and December 1995, he stabbed to death and mutilated four men "for fun". The former cinema manager from Rhyl, who attacked more than 50 other men in what the judge at his murder trial described as "20 years of terror", received four life sentences in November 1996.
Colin Ireland (born March 1953) is known as the "Gay Slayer" and the 'Fairy Liquidator' because he specifically murdered gay men. He killed a total of five men. Ireland, a former soldier who had picked up convictions for burglary and robbery in his twenties, decided to become a serial killer as a New Year’s Resolution at the beginning of 1993. That year, while living in Southend, he started frequenting The Coleherne, a gay pub in west London. Ireland claims to be hetrosexual - he had been married - and that he pretended to be gay only to befriend potential victims. It is unknown whether Ireland's murders were sexually motivated. Ireland has since become the subject of many books on serial killers, and is mentioned in the Manic Street Preachers song, Archives Of Pain.
Colin Norris (born 12 February 1976) a gay Scottish nurse from the Milton area in Glasgow who murdered four elderly patients in a hospital in Leeds in 2002. He was sentenced in 2008 to serve a minimum of 30 years in prison. Referred to in the British press as the "Angel of Death", Norris killed his victims by injecting them with high levels of insulin.
Unknown (1990-present) Italy's present day serial killer who targets gay cultured Italians. The list of murders reads like a Who's Who, including Dante Livorno (theatre critic), Louise Inturrisi (New York food critic) and Count Alvise di Robliant (pianist). Most of the victims are bludgeoned and/or suffocated to death.
US possibles, if a UK perspective too narrow-
Jeffrey Dahmer, Killed 17 -1978/ 91 [Dead]
Andrew Cunanan, Killed 5 - 1997 [Dead]
Randy Kraft, Killed 16 -1971/83 [Alive]
Gary RayBowles, Killed 6 – 1994 [executed]
Bruce McArthur, Killed 8 – 2019 [Alive]
John Wayne Gacy, Killed 33 – 1994 [executed]
