It doesn't even have to be ancient, really. From, say, just before Jack the Ripper's era and going back works!
Not to discourage any new discussion, but here is some information from previous threads:
Locusta often comes up in these discussions but I don't think that is a good way of answering. For one, she wasn't a serial killer, she was a poisoner or an assassin. So even if she was responsible for multiple deaths it isn't falling under the standard definition of serial murder. Secondly she is, in a word, a tad overhyped. The only deaths that can be attributed to her are those of Claudius and his son Britannicus. She seems to have had a reputation before but, again, there is no reason to think of her as a serial killer instead of an assassin.
In mythology you can find things like the bandits Theseus killed, most famously Procrustes, who would tie his victims to a bed and cut off any part that did not fit. Of course this is mythology and not history but may reflect a certain angst over sadistic bandits.
Might be stretching the definition of "serial killer" here, since it was more of a conspiracy that killed a large number of people, but I'll repost a comment I made a few years ago about a story from Livy:
Livy relates a story in the year 332 BC about a conspiracy of patrician women poisoning their wealthy husbands by the dozens. The deaths were thought to be the result of some unknown plague, until a slave told the curule aedile, Quintus Fabius Maximus, and the source was discovered.
For a slightly easier read, here's a translation provided by Steven Saylor in his book Roma:
This year gained an evil notoriety, either because of pestilence or human guilt. Since the authorities are not unanimous on the point, I would gladly believe it was disease, not poison, that carried off so many victims. But lest I impugn the credibility of our sources, I shall relate the sordid details just as they've been handed down to us.
The foremost men in the state were being attacked by the same mysterious malady, which in almost every case proved fatal. A maidservant went to the city magistrate, Quintus Fabius Maximus, and promised to reveal the cause of these suspicious deaths, provided the state would guarantee her safety. Fabius went at once to the consuls, who referred the matter to the senate, which authorized a promise of protection and immunity.
The maidservant then accused certain women of concocting poisons. If officers would follow her at once, she said, they could catch the poison makers in the act. The officers followed the informant and did indeed find the accused compounding poisonous substances, along with batches of poisons that were already made up.
The evidence was seized and brought into the Forum. Twenty high-born matrons, at whose houses poisons were discovered, were brought before the magistrates. Two of the women, Cornelia and Sergia, both from ancient patrician families, contended that the concoctions were medicinal preparations. Accused of lying, the maidservant suggested that the women should drink some of the medicine themselves, if they wished to prove it was harmless.
The court was cleared of spectators. The accused women consulted among themselves. All consented to drink the potions, whereupon they all died.
Their attendants were arrested at once, and informed against a large number of matrons. Eventually, 170 women were found guilty. Up to that time there had never been a public investigation of poisoning in Rome. The whole incident was regarded as an evil portent, and the women were thought to have acted out of madness rather than deliberate wickedness.
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3carby/are_there_any_accounts_of_serial_killers_in/
I can give you a little food for thought from a European perspective. Consider a few things:
In most places people were born, grew up, and died in the same community. If you were a murderous sociopath it's going to be really hard to get away with it. Murders did happen. Fights were extremely common. But getting away with it was another matter. The local elite had every reason to investigate and solve a murder, because it kept the common folk compliant (the local elite was doing its job of protecting people, etc. etc.). Modern forensics didn't exist back then, but ancient and medieval legal systems were based on reputation-- so if you were known as a dangerous person and you were accused of a crime your odds were not good. This means that getting away with murder once, while possible, was unlikely. Getting away with murder twice was very difficult.
This equation changes when we look at the elite. The elite weren't outside of most legal systems, but they were the enforcers of the local legal systems, so they could effectively cover up and protect themselves, which is why most records of pre-modern serial killers that we have are oriented towards folks who murder slaves and servants. When you have the occasional elite sociopath the common folks' options were limited. They might be able to use church structures to sound the alarm, or they might riot, but in general there was little they could do. This was considered bad bad bad by the elite at large, because if one member of the elite ran amuck then commoners were less likely to treat him and (by extension) the rest of the elite with the deference that was their due. So when elite sociopaths were found out for their crimes the trials tended to be big and public and demonstrated the "fairness" of the current system. This is really interesting, because it tells us that while the elite could get away with quite a bit, when they were caught crossing the line everyone came down on them like a ton of bricks. Check out the accounts of the trials and death of the Earl Ferrers for a great example. Also, you can look at Cynthia Herrup's book A House in Gross Disorder, which deals with Mervyn Tuchet, an earl who raped his wife and committed sodomy. (sidenote: Cynthia Herrup's middle name is "Brilliant"-- that's setting expectations high!)
When physical mobility became more of the norm we begin to see more incidences of what I would call serial killing. The Industrial Revolution led to a mass movement to cities, which allowed greater anonymity and also gave murderers a place to escape to. I think Catherine Hayes is a great example of a sociopath who more or less escapes punishment for her misdeeds for quite a while. She was a horrible human being who paid two men (well, one may have been seduced) into killing her husband. She then chopped up the body, had the head dumped in the Thames, and the rest in a pond. When her husband's body is found (and reassembled!) she was linked to the crime by-- seriously-- blood spatter on her floor and then confessions of her accomplices. While she awaited execution a litany of her crimes and misdeeds came out, which may have included infanticide. Her husband could have been a willing accomplice to this-- it seems that she worked as a prostitute, so he may have endorsed her infanticide because he was uncertain if the children were his. She claims he forced her into prostitution and infanticide and that's why she killed him. In any case, they moved often enough that the death of her babies never elicited much notice. Anonymity and a greater number of marginal people means that serial killers have an easier time.
Werewolf stories could have their origin in serial killings. To be frank, I think there's an element of truth to this. But, I don't believe the same could be said for most witchcraft attributed killings. Werewolf murders were often associated with violent and physical events. Witchcraft was more often associated with "spooky actions at a distance."
Serial killers require power over their victims to be successful (this usually assures that your crime isn't noticed as quickly). That means that their victims have to be isolated in some way or that they have marginal existences. In the modern day that means babies, hospitalized patients, prostitutes, the elderly, runaways, homosexuals, etc., were or are more likely to be victimized. In earlier eras it could mean servants or slaves.
Serial killers also require a source of victims. In a village of 100 people one death is easy to notice. In a city of thousands it's just an unfortunate statistic.
Not ancient, but Medieval Hungary.
Countess Elizabeth Báthory officially killed around 80 young girls with the possibility of 650 more. She was discovered after local rumors prompted the King to send an envoy to investigate. She was apprehended, found guilty in a court of law, and then sealed inside a brick room complex in a castle until she died.
And that is how ghost stories start
Was that a usual punishment? If not, why did they choose such a strange one?
Apparently, the King wanted her executed, but political realities necessitated that she remain alive. People were afraid that the crown would inherit her lands.
Gilles de Rais, on the other hand, (a contemporary and friend of Joan of Arc) similarly killed several hundred boys. He was found out by the Church and after a secular investigation was brought to court. He had been using children to try and summon demons, which didn't work. He also took pleasure in mutilating and sexually abusing specifically male children.
He was found guilty of murder, sodomy, and heresy and burned at the stake.
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1a7isn/are_there_any_records_of_serial_killers_in/
The only one that comes to my mind is Gilles de Rais. He was a child serial killer that most likely killed from 80 to 200 children. However, some authors claim that he could have killed around 800 children. It is hard to tell because he either burned or buried the bodies. (http://www.encyclopedia.com/topic/Gilles_de_Rais.aspx#1-1G2:3403801926-full)
There were a few reasons why did he do such horrible things. The first one is his interest in satanism. He killed those kids as a sacrifice. The second one was his interest in children in a sexual way. The third one was because he was just a psycho. Gilles testified that “when the said children were dead, he kissed them and those who had the most handsome limbs and heads he held up to admire them, and had their bodies cruelly cut open and took delight at the sight of their inner organs; and very often when the children were dying he sat on their stomachs and took pleasure in seeing them die and laughed” (This quote is from Wiki)
In early modern Germany, stories of robber-murderers were very popular, and many were based in truth. The most infamous of these was Christman Genipperteinga, who possibly murdered more than 900 people. He dwelt in a cave system that was ingenuously designed with rooms, traps, vaults, and other accouterments. He robbed those who travelled along the road near his cave. But this was not the only motive for the killings; he apparently was quite mad. He had kidnapped a young girl and forced her into a life of sexual slavery. She bore him several children, all of whom he killed and then hung on chords outside of his cave. When the wind blew so that they swayed in the breeze, he would smile and say something like "dance, my children!" He was caught when the young woman made her getaway. He was broken on the wheel and executed.
Speaking of executions, there is a strong case to be made that the worst serial killers of European history actually were executioners. The most famous was Franz Schmidt, who killd over 350 people in his life, using methods such as burning, the wheel, drowning, hanging, and beheading with the standard german executioner's sword ( example ) Wiltenburg, Joy. Crime and Culture in Early Modern Germany. University of Virginia Press, 2012.
This question gets asked quite often, so here's my answer from an another thread.
One of the oldest documented named serial killers is likely Liu Pengli, king of Jidong beginning in 144 BC, whose murders are recorded in the Hanshu and the Shiji. He reputedly killed at least a hundred people for sport during his reign. The emperor was informed of his murders by a family member of one of his victims. Officials urged the emperor to execute Liu Pengli, but because Liu was related to emperor, he was only exiled from Shangyong and demoted to a commoner as punishment for his crimes.
The Shiji and Han Shu are available on the Chinese Text Project. Burton Watson has also translated the passage on Liu Pengli from the Shiji:
Liu Pengli, another son of King Xiao of Liang, was made king of Jidong in the sixth year of the middle period of Emperor Jing's reign. Liu Pengli was arrogant and cruel, and paid no attention to the etiquette demanded between ruler and subject. In the evenings he used to go out on marauding expeditions with twenty or thirty slaves or young men who were in hiding from the law, murdering people and seizing their belongings for sheer sport. When the affair came to light in the twenty-ninth year of his rule it was found he had murdered at least 100 or more persons. Everyone in the kingdom knew about his ways, so that the people were afraid to venture out of their houses at night. The son of one of his victims finally sent a report to the throne, and the Han officials request that he be executed. The emperor could not bear to carry out their recommendation, but made him a commoner and banished him to Shangyong. His territory was taken over and made into the province of Dahe.
The Benders in Kansas were only found out, because they killed the brother of a state senator. The senator went out and spent a long time trying to find his brother after disappearing on a trail. All he knew was that he'd stayed at the Bender's Inn, then disappeared. The Benders blamed the local Native Americans for all the disappearances when asked about him and other disappearance. Finally, the locals searched the house, and found bodies buried all over their garden. Unfortunately, the Benders had disappeared by then and never found.
Does anyone have any reliable information on Tom Quick, the Indian Slayer? I have read that he is America's first serial killer and he killed over 100 Indians in the 1700s, but the line between fact and legend is pretty blurry.
There's the Pali Buddhist scripture the Angulimala Sutta. It concerns a robber and mass murderer by the name of Angulimala, meaning 'Finger Garland', named for a necklace he wore of his victims' fingers. Supposedly a contemporary of the Buddha (c.5th century BCE), his kill count was reported (in other sources preserved in Chinese translation) to be just shy of one thousand. You can read a translation of his story here.
The Pali Canon was written down c.1st century BCE, based on older oral tradition.
I kinda feel like the line between serial killer and warlord can get a little blurry several centuries ago. Would you consider Genghis Khan, Vlad the Impaler, or Atilla the Hun to be serial killers? Clearly there is some difference here, but it's unclear to me what it is. Are serial killers people who don't admit to murdering folks, while warlords are people who do admit to murdering folks? Are serial killers just would-be warlords who lived in a society in which people could actually be punished for murder? If a prerequisite for a serial killer is a society in which people can expect to be punished for murdering someone, they're not going to exist in societies in which might makes right and the quickest way to rise to power is through murder.