The 9 Most Heinous Crimes of the 1980s

The 80s. A lot went down.

The 1980s were not only when the number of serial killers peaked, but the public’s obsession with true crime heightened. Needless to say, they were never bored during this decade.

Not only are these some of the most horrible crimes that occurred during that 10-year span, but a few of them were committed by names still commonly known today.

Here are nine crimes that left a grisly legacy.

Pacific Southwest Airlines Flight 1771

Still known as the second-worst mass murder in Californian history, this Pacific Southwest flight crashed near Cayucos, California, on December 7, 1987.

As USAir was taking over Pacific Southwest Airlines, employee David Burke was terminated after stealing $69 and was suspected of other petty crimes. After meeting with his supervisor and begging for his job back, he was denied.

So, he decided to do what any normal, rational person would do. He planned a mass murder/suicide. *Extreme sarcasm*

Burke purchased a ticket for PSA Flight 1771, from Los Angeles to San Francisco. Burke’s supervisor was on the same flight, as he used it as his daily commute to and from work.

Burke was able to bypass security and board the flight with a .44 Magnum revolver that he had borrowed from a co-worker. He used his airline credentials, as they were never surrendered after his termination.

The exact sequence of events before the crash is unknown. However, it is known that 43 passengers and crew died that day. Five of them, including the pilots, were shot prior to the crash.

Edmond Post Office Shooting

Before Patrick Sherrill, no one in the United States feared a mass shooting at their workplace by a disgruntled employee.

Sherrill changed that on August 20, 1986, in Edmond, Oklahoma.

Sherill was a relief carrier at the Edmond Post Office, meaning he often worked different routes and different days. This also meant that his job did not have the same stability that other employees had.

In the aftermath, some co-workers described Sherill as erratic, irritable, and not a reliable employee. Others stated that his job performance was fine and he was picked on by management.

Either way, Sherill was reprimanded on April 19, 1986, by supervisors Esser and Bland for his behavior on the job.

The next morning, just after 7 a.m. Sherrill arrived, pulled out a .45 caliber pistol, and shot and killed Esser. He searched for the other supervisor who reprimanded him, but Bland was running late for work that day.

Sherrill began shooting any employee he came across. He continued the attack for 15- 20 minutes.

He only stopped once he fired a final bullet into his own forehead.

There were around 100 employees at the facility at the time of the attack. Of those, 14 died on the scene and six others were injured. Some employees only survived because they played dead until Sherrill passed them by.

This incident inspired the phrase “going postal”, as it was said afterward that postal authorities ignored numerous signs of Sherrill’s unstable and hostile behavior.

It also became the first mass workplace shooting to ever occur in the United States and remains the deadliest to this day.

Diane Downs

Before Susan Smith in 1994, there was Diane Downs.

On May 19, 1983, Diane ran inside a Springfield, Oregon hospital with a gunshot wound to her arm. She explained that her three children were outside in the car and had also been shot.

Christie, 8, Cheryl, 7, and Danny, 3, had all been shot following an attempted car-jacking, according to their mother.

Cheryl was already deceased and the other two were admitted in critical condition.

Soon, detectives noticed inconsistencies in Diane’s stories, so they began looking in a different direction. Their focus lessened on the “bushy-haired” man that Diane claimed attacked her and her kids and more on her erratic behavior. She seemed more concerned about calling a man named Robert Knickerbocker than being updated on the condition of her children.

While questioning Knickerbocker, he admitted to a previous relationship with Diane and how it ended because he did not want children. A fact that he admitted to Diane, who then began stalking him.

After the shooting, Christie had a stroke, which affected her speech. Though she couldn’t talk, her eyes would dart back and forth and her vitals would spike whenever her mother entered the room.

After months of rehab, Christie was able to tell investigators what happened, which was that her mother had shot her and her siblings.

Diane was arrested and charged with murder, attempted murder, and criminal assault. She was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison plus 50 years. Before her arrest, she became pregnant and gave birth to her fourth child in prison, who was adopted.

Christie and Danny (who also survived but was paralyzed from the waist down) were adopted by the prosecutor in Diane’s case, Fred Hugi, and his wife.

Henry Lee Lucas and Ottis Toole: The Confession Killers

This sadistic duo claims to have killed hundreds of people.

Ottis Toole blames his abuse as a child and exposure to “satanic rituals” for molding him into the monster he became. He committed his first murder at 14, by running a salesman over with his own car. Between 1966 and 1973, he became a drifter and survived by panhandling and prostituting.

Henry Lee Lucas had a similar upbringing in which his prostitute mother forced him to watch her have sex with clients and beat him regularly. He ran away from home in the sixth grade. He also claims that his first murder was committed when he was 14, of a 17-year-old girl who he tried to rape.

In January 1960, after returning home, his mother struck him with a broom during an argument. Lucas retaliated by stabbing her in the neck, which killed her. He served 10 years in prison but was released in June 1970 due to prison overcrowding.

Toole and Lucas met at a soup kitchen in Jacksonville, FL in 1976. They became friends, coworkers, and possibly lovers.

The pair went on a multi-state killing spree, targeting migrants, hitchhikers, and sex workers. According to Lucas, Toole enjoyed “crucifying” his victims, as well as cooking and eating them.

On July 27, 1981, 6-year-old Adam Walsh was abducted from a Sears department store in Hollywood, FL. His severed head was found two weeks later in a drainage canal. Toole confessed to the murder but was never convicted due to a lack of evidence. He later recanted, but authorities feel certain that Toole was Adam’s killer.

On January 4, 1982, in Jacksonville, FL, Toole barricaded 65-year-old George Sonnenburg in a house and set it on fire. Sonnenburg died of injuries sustained a week later. Toole was arrested and confessed to the murder of Sonnenburg.

Two months later, Lucas was arrested on a firearms charge and began unleashing massive confessions about his and Toole’s activities, including the murder of Adam Walsh.

Toole eventually began fessing up to his supposed crimes as well. Toole and Lucas became known as “The Confession Killers”.

While claiming different numbers, Toole and Lucas confessed to over 100 murders. Toole stopped at 108, while Lucas claimed over 600. He later admitted that the confessions were “to make the police look stupid” and to get extra privileges. For example, the police would often let him get fast food on the way to a supposed crime scene.

To this day, no one is sure of their true number of victims and the terrible things they did to them.

Lucas was ultimately sentenced to life in prison and died of congestive heart failure on March 12, 2001 at the age of 64.

Toole was initially sentenced to two death sentences, but it was later commuted to life sentences. He pled guilty to four more murders, for a total of six life sentences. He died of cirrhosis on September 15, 1996, at the age of 49.

Larry Eyler: The Interstate Killer

Larry Eyler was a serial killer who roamed the Midwest in search of teenage boys and young men. He took the lives of at least 21 of them.

His spree began in 1982 and continued until 1984. It only ended due to his arrest and conviction for the murder of 16-year-old Daniel Bridges, even though he had been arrested for murder before.

Eyler was pulled over on September 30, 1983, for a routine traffic violation. In the company of a young male hitchhiker at the time, Eyler was detained on suspicion of soliciting the young male for sexual purposes.

Without his consent and prior to his arrest, his vehicle was searched by police who located a knife, nylon rope, handcuffs, a hammer, baseball bats, a mallet, and surgical tape.

After being taken in, they informed Eyler that he was a suspect in a series of murders due to an anonymous tip. They took casts of his boots, which matched evidence from one of the crime scenes, as well as his vehicle’s tire tracks pattern.

Although the evidence sent to the FBI came back an exact match, during the evidentiary hearing, the judge ruled that Eyler’s detention had been illegal and the evidence gathered was obtained without probable cause. The physical evidence from the vehicle was deemed inadmissible using the exclusionary rule.

Eyler was released on February 1, 1984.

On August 21, 1984, the dismembered body of Daniel Bridges was found in a garbage dumpster near Eyler’s apartment. The janitor who located the body advised police that he witnessed a tenant named Larry Eyler placing the bags in the dumpster earlier that afternoon.

Eyler was once again arrested for murder. A search of his apartment found remnants of blood that attempted to be cleaned up and Bridges’ jeans and t-shirt, covered in blood. His fingerprints were also on the trash bags that Bridges’ body had been placed in.

Eyler was convicted of aggravated kidnapping, unlawful restraint, murder, and concealment of the body. He was sentenced to death.

After his death in 1994, due to complications from AIDS, his attorney, Kathleen Zellner came forward with a stunning confession.

Shortly before his death, Eyler had given her details of the kidnapping, rape, torture, and murders of 21 men and boys between 1982 and 1984. He even provided a list of their names, knowing that he would never pay for those crimes.

Wayne Williams: The Atlanta Child Murderer

Wayne Williams only became a suspect in a series of murders after his car was spotted by a stakeout team monitoring a section of the Chattahoochee River. On May 22, 1981, the team’s hard work paid off after hearing a splash at the location where several bodies had been located over the past two years.

Three days later, the nude body of 27-year-old Nathanial Carter was found, after being missing for four days. His cause of death was “possible asphyxia.”

Known as the Atlanta Child Murders, 23 children and adolescents were murdered, beginning on July 28, 1979 through 1981. All of the victims were African-American and mostly male. Only three were female and six were considered adults. The youngest victim was only 7 years old and the oldest, Nathanial Carter, was 27 at the time of his death.

While there has been speculation that Williams wasn’t responsible for all of the murders, forensic evidence, such as carpet fibers from his home and vehicles were on several of the victims. The others were connected to Williams due to the similarities in the murders and victim profiles.

Williams was convicted of the murders of Nathanial Carter and Jimmy Ray Payne, 21, on February 27, 1982 and sentenced to two life terms in prison. He was never officially convicted for the murders of the rest of the victims, as it was felt that he wasn’t ever going to be a free man again anyway.

While he will never hurt another child again, that doesn’t give the parents of the children that he did hurt any closure.

He was denied parole in 2021 but will get the opportunity again in 2027.

Gary Ridgeway: The Green River Killer

Gary Ridgeway is currently the 2nd most prolific serial killer in U.S. history.

He was linked to, charged with, and convicted of the deaths of 48 young women in Seattle and Tacoma, Washington, most of which were strangled.

Ridgeway committed the majority of his crimes between 1982 and 1984. The bodies were located during the same time period, but it would be over 20 years before “The Green River Killer” would be identified.

Most of the women were sex workers or teenage runaways. Ridgeway would strangle them by hand or using ligatures. After dumping them, he would often return to have intercourse with their bodies.

Ridgeway was arrested for soliciting a prostitute in 1982 and while investigators had their suspicions, there wasn’t enough physical evidence to tie him to the crimes.

Advances in DNA technology eventually led investigators back to Ridgeway and he was arrested on November 30, 2001. He agreed to a plea bargain that would take the death penalty off the table if he revealed the locations of his victims that had not yet been located.

In 2003, Ridgeway was sentenced to 48 life sentences without the possibility of parole.

While his confirmed body count is 48, he confessed to murdering between 65 and 71 young women in total.

Ridgeway stated that he considered murdering young women his “career.’

Samuel Little: The United States’ Most Prolific Serial Killer

Samuel Little claims to have strangled 93 people to death between 1970 and 2005. He stated that many of them were not classified as murders, but overdoses, accidents, or undetermined causes.

In 1982, Little was arrested for the murder of Melinda LaPree, 26, in Pascagoula, MS, however, the grand jury failed to indict him. He was immediately extradited to Florida and tried for the murder of Patricia Mount, also 26. This time, he was acquitted in January 1984.

Little later moved to San Diego, California. In October 1984, he was arrested for the kidnapping, beating, and strangulation of Lauri Barros, 22, who survived the attack. Only a month later, police found Little in the backseat of a car in the same place he tried to kill Barros, with an unconscious woman, who also survived.

Little served all of two-and-a-half years in prison for those crimes. When he was released in 1987, he moved to Los Angeles, where he committed at least 10 murders.

His criminal career finally came to a halt on September 5, 2012, when he was arrested at a homeless shelter in Kentucky and extradited back to California on a narcotics warrant. Authorities used his DNA to confirm that he was involved in the murders of Los Angeles victims, Linda Alford (killed on July 13, 1987), Guadalupe Duarte Apodaca (killed on September 3, 1987), and Audrey Nelson Everett (killed on August 14, 1989).

Later, police announced that Little was also a person of interest in over three dozen murders that took place in the 1980s.

On September 25, 2014, Little was found guilty of the murders of Alford, Apodaca, and Everett. Even though he insisted he was innocent, Little was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

The FBI confirmed Little’s involvement in at least 60 of the 93 confessed murders, the largest number of confirmed victims for any serial killer in United States history.

Samuel Little suffered from diabetes, heart problems, and other health conditions while in prison, and died on December 30, 2020.

A full list of his confirmed and suspected victims can be viewed here.

Richard Ramirez: The Night Stalker

This list wouldn’t be complete without “The Night Stalker”. A truly disturbed individual, Ramirez’s crimes instilled fear in the public in a new way. The image of a monster waiting in the shadows of an alleyway was replaced by fears of that monster creeping into your home as you slept.

Ramirez’s reign of terror lasted two years, originally thought to have begun in June 1984 when he raped and murdered a 79-year-old widow in Los Angeles. His following victims, some of who survived, were sexually assaulted and beaten in their homes.

Before his capture, he successfully murdered 14 people and attempted to murder five others. He assaulted, raped, and tortured at least 25 more in their homes.

The product of a violent upbringing, he included Satanic imagery at his crimes, often carving pentagrams into his victim’s bodies. Even scarier, he had no victim profile. Anyone was a possible victim — men, women, young, old, and those of all races.

Ramirez was identified after a fingerprint was left at the scene of one of his crimes. His name and photo were released to the public six days after his final murder.

He was recognized by a man who called the police. Ramirez ran and while attempting to steal a car, was surrounded by a mob of angry citizens. They beat him until the police arrived to take him into custody.

Not so tough now Ricky, are ya?

Ramirez was convicted of 13 counts of murder and sentenced to die in the gas chamber. His response?

“I am beyond good and evil. I will be avenged. Lucifer dwells in us all. That’s it.”

He died in prison in 2013, awaiting execution.

In 2009, his DNA was matched with a sample collected from the scene of an April 1984 unsolved murder of a 9-year-old girl in San Francisco.

There wasn’t a decade like the 80s, baby. It introduced the best music of all time, the weirdest fashion, and some of the most terrible people on the planet.

Thanks for reading! Stay tuned as the 1970s are coming soon!