9 Serial Killer Families That Murdered Together

Serial killers are terrifying when it's just one person, but when it's a whole family? That's beyond creepy. When most people think serial killers they think of men, or maybe killer couples, scorned women literally thirsty for blood, or little old ladies who weren't so nice.

What you might not think of are serial killer families. What's more horrifying than a family of murderers who kill together? These families are ruthless killers who you wouldn't want living next door. But you know what they say: the family that murders together, stays together.

Fred and Rose West were a married couple who killed at least 10 victims during the 1970s and '80s in Gloucester, England. The Wests would find their victims by recruiting women to work as nannies for their children or picking up female hitchhikers. They would rape, torture, and eventually murder their victims.

Unlike other families on this list, the West children were not participants in the crimes, but victims of them. Rose West killed her husband's 8-year-old daughter Charmaine in 1971, and though her husband did not participate in that murder, he did nothing about it. Many years later, the couple killed their 16-year-old daughter Heather when she told friends her parents were abusive.

The Wests were finally arrested after another one of their daughters told a friend's mother about her abusive parents, and the woman went to the police. Investigators found the bodies of 10 women on the property. Fred West committed suicide before his trial, while Rose West was convicted and sentenced to life in prison.

The Tarverdiyeva family was responsible for at least 30 murders in the Rostov region of Russia from 2007 to 2013. The matriarch, Inessa, gave up her job as a nursery teacher in favor of robbing and killing people. She, her dentist husband, and her two daughters all committed the crimes together. The younger daughter was only 13 at the time the family was apprehended.

The family typically broke into homes to rob and kill their victims, although some victims were killed in their cars. Among the family's victims were six policemen, some of whom were murdered for their weapons, and some just for their money.

Their crimes were grisly. On one occasion they gouged out the eyes of two teenage girls, one of whom was Inessa's own goddaughter. Inessa showed no remorse when she was finally arrested, saying, "I am a gangster by nature," and killing was a "means of earning money."

Linwood Earl Briley, James Dyral (J.B.) Briley, and Anthony Ray Briley terrorized Richmond, VA, in 1979. Linwood, the oldest brother and the gang leader, began killing when he was only 16. He shot a neighbor while she was hanging laundry in her backyard. Unfortunately for his subsequent victims, he only served one year in prison for his first crime.

The Briley brothers, along with an accomplice who was not related to them, killed at least 11 people in the Richmond area. The murders were brutal. One victim had his skull crushed with a piece of concrete and another was found with knives, scissors and a carving fork stuck in his body. Two of the victims were a pregnant woman and her five-year-old son.

Linwood and J.B. were executed in 1984 and 1985, respectively. The youngest brother, Anthony, escaped execution because there was no evidence that he killed any of the victims with his own hands. Today, he remains incarcerated in Virginia.

The Kelly family was so similar to the Bender family, it's unclear whether they were the same people or copycats. Just like the Benders, the Kellys were a family of four: a husband, wife, son, and daughter. They were active in the 1880s, shortly after the Benders escaped. But a newspaper article puts the children's ages at 18 and 20 in 1888, which seems to make them too young to be the Benders.

Whether they were the same family or not, their crimes were just as gruesome. In December of 1887, a hunt for a missing drummer from Chicago led a search party to the vacant Kelly house, where they found five bodies in the cellar and four buried under the stable. They also found a blunt ax covered with human flesh and hair.

The Kelly family was hunted down and hanged by the search party. Before the father was killed, he confessed that they had killed nine men and two women, some of whom were rich travelers who had stopped to stay at their home. 

The Bender family consisted of a husband John Sr., wife Elvira, and their children, Kate and John Jr. The family settled in Kansas in 1870, near the Great Osage Trail, and began murdering shortly after. Pioneer settlers would often offer travelers food, supplies, and a place to sleep for a night. The Benders offered all these services in order to get their victims inside their home.

The family would invite their victim to sit in a seat honor for supper, which was right in front of a huge curtain. Unbeknownst to the victim, a member of the family was waiting behind the curtain to hit him in the head with a hammer. Once he had been hit, his throat would be slit and his body would be dropped into a cellar via a trap door.

Investigators eventually found 10 bodies buried in the garden on the Bender property, but they concluded that the family had murdered a total of 21 victims. The family managed to escape and no one knows what happened to them.

It was rumored that "Bender" was not actually the family's name, but rather an adopted one. Some believe Mr. and Mrs. Bender were not legally married, and that Kate and John Jr. were in fact lovers not brother and sister. 

The Gonzalez sisters killed at least 91 people in the 1950s and '60s. Delfina and María de Jesús Gonzalez ran a sex trafficking operation in San Francisco del Rincón in Mexico. The sisters would recruit women by promising them jobs as waitresses or maids. Once the women arrived, the sisters took them into captivity and forced them to have sex with men for money.

When the women got sick (many with STDs) or refused to have sex with customers, the Gonzalez sisters killed them by starving or beating them. Many of the women became pregnant, and the Gonzalez sisters would force them to abort their babies. When the property was eventually raided, the bodies of several fetuses were found along with the adult victims.

The sisters also killed male customers who happened to have a lot of money. Their body count of 91 earned them the Guinness World Records title of "Most prolific murder partnership." Two other sisters, Carmen and Maria Luisa, also aided in the crimes, although they were not included in the Guinness title.

The Stafflebacks were yet another family of serial killers to come out of Kansas. The mother, Nancy Staffleback, was known to be the leader of the family, which had lived a life of crime long before their murder spree started. In 1897, Nancy, her husband, and two of her sons were convicted of murdering a miner and dumping his body down a mine shaft. 

And despite being only convicted for one crime, many believe the Staffleback clan actually robbed and killed about 50 people - all clients of a brothel.

The family's first victim may have been a girlfriend of one of the sons, Ed. Ed's girlfriend and one of her friends had taken up residence in the house. Another Staffleback son, Mike, beat one of the young women to death during a violent altercation. To ensure the other young woman's, Ed beat her to death as well. So much for love.

No one knows for certain whether the Bean Clan really existed. They supposedly lived any time between the 13th and 16th centuries in Scotland. As the story goes, Sawney Bean and his wife took up residence in a cave called Bennane Cave just after they were married, and Mr. Bean decided to support his family by robbery.

Bean soon determined he had to kill the victims he robbed so he wouldn't get caught. The decision to murder the robbery victims quickly led to the idea to eat them as well. Mr. and Mrs. Bean began raising children on a diet of human meat, and as the children grew up, they began to take part in the murdering and the cooking. The Bean Clan was known to kill half a dozen victims all at once in an ambush.

The family continued to grow and the killings went on until one day when an ambush went wrong, and the murderous family members were surprised and overwhelmed by dozens of witnesses to their latest attack. Shortly thereafter, all 48 members of the family were captured and executed for their crimes.

The Harpe Brothers were probably the first serial killers in America. Some sources suggest they were actually cousins, though they are widely known as brothers. The Harpes fought for the British in the Revolutionary War, but eventually grew bored with being soldiers. They captured two women for their wives and moved from the Carolinas to present day Tennessee in 1781.

From 1781 to 1799, the Harpes murdered dozens of victims from Tennessee to Illinois. They often teamed up with other outlaws along the way. Their victims were mostly travelers or pioneers in small settlements or inns, and they were even rumored to have murdered their own children. Their signature was cutting disemboweling the bodies, filling them with rocks and throwing them into the river to sink.

In 1799, one of the brothers was shot by a family member of one of his victims. Before dying, he confessed to at least 20 murders. The other brother escaped but was finally captured and executed in 1804.