Top 10 Oldest Real-Life Killers

The World’s Oldest Killers

Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we’re looking at 10 of the world’s oldest killers.

For this list, we’re exploring various people from around the world who have committed fatal crimes at an advanced age. This is by no means an exhaustive and authoritative list. Rather, we’ll simply be looking at interesting stories involving elderly killers.

Have you heard about any of these people? Let us know in the comments below!

Albert Fish

All serial killers are despicable people, but Albert Fish is on a whole other level. Known by various nicknames like The Werewolf of Wysteria and The Gray Man, Fish was a notorious criminal who solely targeted young people. He killed at least three little ones, but the true number could be much higher. In fact, Fish once claimed that he “had children in every state” - an eerie proclamation that is sure to conjure up nightmares. Fish’s last suspected victim was 17-year-old Benjamin Collings, whom Fish may have killed in December 1932 at the age of 62. He was finally apprehended two years later at 64.

Dorothea Puente

Known as The Death House Landlady, Dorothea Puente operated a boarding house in Sacramento and killed some of her tenants. After disposing of their bodies, Puente would cash their social security checks. While she was only convicted of three homicides, her total body count is nine. The first came in April of 1982 when Puente killed Ruth Munroe with a combination of drugs. At the time, Puente was 53. Her final victim was Alvaro Montoya, who disappeared in November of 1988 - just a few months shy of Puente’s 60th birthday. Her trial ended in 1993 and Puente received life in prison at the age of 64.

Kevin Gavin

Back in January of 2021, a man named Kevin Gavin was arrested for killing three elderly women. The first homicide occurred in 2015 when Gavin killed an 82-year-old woman named Myrtle McKinney. Two more victims followed in 2019 and 2021. At the time, Gavin was working as a handyman inside the Carter G. Woodson Houses in Brooklyn, New York, which is also where the victims lived. When Gavin confessed to the killings, he claimed that all three victims owed him money for his work. He was eventually caught in January of 2021 after using the debit card of his latest victim. He was 66 years old.

Tamara Samsonova

Forget John Wick - Tamara Samsonova is the real Baba Yaga. No, seriously, that’s one of her nicknames, alongside The Granny Ripper. Samsonova's husband disappeared in 2000 when Samsonova was 53. Nothing has been proven, but Samsonova has long been suspected of killing him. In July 2015, Samsonova killed her roommate Valentina Ulanova and was arrested. At the time of her arrest, Samsonova was 68 years old. It is now believed that Samsonova may have killed up to thirteen people throughout her life, with at least some of her victims being tenants of her apartment.

Melissa Ann Shepard

A career criminal from Canada, Melissa Ann Shepard committed dozens of frauds throughout the ‘70s and ‘80s and was in and out of prison. In 1991, Shepard killed her second husband Gordon Stewart by running him over with a car. Shepard claimed that she killed Stewart in self-defense, as he was physically abusive towards her. However, some people doubted her story. When she was convicted of manslaughter the next year, Shepard was 57 years old. In 2001, when Shepard was 66, her third husband died under mysterious circumstances. Shepard also attempted to kill her fourth husband, Fred Weeks, and was ultimately charged for lesser crimes in 2012. She was sentenced to three and a half years in prison at the age of 77.

Samuel Little

Everyone knows the likes of Jeffrey Dahmer and Ted Bundy, yet Samuel Little has fallen through the cracks of general knowledge. This is curious, as he is technically the most prolific killer in the history of the United States. Little is confirmed to have killed at least 60 women, and he is suspected of killing upwards of 93. His crime spree lasted over thirty years, spanning from 1970 to 2005, although it may have started as early as 1960 and ended as late as 2012. Little admitted to killing Nancy Stevens in 2005 when he would have been 65. But his crimes may have continued up until his arrest in September 2012, when Little was 72.

Sandra Layne

On the afternoon of May 18, 2012, a 74-year-old grandmother named Sandra Layne shot and killed her own grandson, Jonathan Hoffman. At the time of his death, Hoffman was 17 and had not yet graduated high school. Hoffman had been living with Layne at the time of his death, as his parents had moved out of state and he didn’t wish to transfer schools. Hoffman’s parents asked the jury to hit Layne with a harsh punishment, and they responded in turn, sentencing her to 20 to 40 years. Layne was 75 at the time of her sentencing. When she learned that her mother was going to prison for the rest of her life, Jennifer Hoffman gave her mother a celebratory thumbs up.

Ray & Faye Copeland

Throughout the late 1980s, Ray and Faye Copeland ran a personal farm in Mooresville, Missouri. Ray Copeland operated a scam in which he would pick up drifters, write them bad checks, and have them buy cattle for him. He would then sell the cattle for a profit before the check bounced and kill the drifters to ensure their silence. It’s believed that Faye was his accomplice, and their body count ranges from 5 to 12. The Copelands were both sentenced to death. At the time of sentencing, Faye was 69 and Ray was 76, making them the oldest couple in American history to have been sentenced to death.

Baba Anujka

The story of Baba Anujka is a fascinating one. In the late 19th century, Anujka worked as a healer in the Yugoslavian village of Vladimirovac. But really, we’re using the term “healer” in the loosest possible terms here. Anujka would often sell a so-called “love potion” to those who came in for marriage problems, and this “potion” contained arsenic and various fatal toxins. It’s believed that Anujka killed upwards of 150 people with this toxic liquid. She was finally caught in 1928 at the age of 90 and given a fifteen-year sentence. However, she was released at the age of 98 and lived two more years before passing in 1938 at the ripe age of 100.

Michael Juskin

When Michael Juskin killed his wife Rosalia with an ax in April 2015, he was 100 years old. Juskin was reportedly suffering from dementia at the time, and this may have made his home life dangerously unstable. Witnesses paint a dark picture of Michael and Rosalia’s marriage. Bergen County Prosecutor John Molinelli claimed that they had a “history of domestic issues,” and a neighbor told CBS News that their daughter was trying to get Rosalia away from Michael for some time. Shortly after killing his wife, 100-year-old Michael Juskin took his own life.