EU Countries With the Most Serial Killers

Key Takeaways

• Germany records the most identified serial killers among EU member states. Its count reaches 105.
• Hungary’s identified serial killer count runs 4.17 times higher than its share of the world population. That is the highest ratio of any EU country with identified serial killers.
• Germany’s population-adjusted ratio for identified serial killers falls to just 1.62. Nine other EU countries have higher ratios.
• 13 of the EU’s 27 member states are missing from the report’s identified serial killer count entirely. The gap reflects the report’s strict documentation criteria, not an absence of cases.
• The EU’s raw ranking of identified serial killers reflects which countries document and publicize cases in English. It doesn’t necessarily reflect which countries have produced more actual serial killers.

EU Countries With the Most Identified Serial Killers

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Learn something new about Germany every week and make informed decisions with confidence.

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Learn something new about Germany every week and make informed decisions with confidence.

Germany, Italy, and France Lead the EU in Identified Serial Killers

The EU’s 14 reported countries have identified 528 serial killers combined. Germany, Italy, and France alone account for 57.6% of that total.

• Germany: 105 identified serial killers
• Italy: 102 identified serial killers
• France: 97 identified serial killers

Germany’s Murder Cases Are Declining ->

Germany, France, and Italy are the EU’s three most populous member states. A larger population creates more opportunities for a case to be caught and documented over time.

Italy, France, and Germany have some of the EU’s most established police and judicial systems. That’s why they outrank the other 11 countries in this table. Stronger institutions solve and confirm more cases.

Hungary and Austria Rank as the Most Overrepresented Countries for Identified Serial Killers

A raw count of identified serial killers doesn’t account for population size. Adjusting for it changes the ranking entirely.

A ratio above 1 means a country holds a larger share of the world’s identified serial killers than its share of the world’s population. A ratio below 1 means the opposite.

A country’s share of the world population is simply its population divided by the world’s total population.

Hungary’s identified serial killer count runs 4.17 times higher than its share of the world population would predict. That is the highest ratio of any EU country in the report.

Hungary’s population-adjusted ratio of 4.17 corrects the source’s originally published ratio of 0.83.

The report originally listed Hungary’s population share at 0.60%. The correct 2022 figure is closer to 0.12%.

Austria’s population-adjusted ratio of identified serial killers ranks second among the EU’s 14 reported countries. It reaches 3.58.

Hungary and Austria are among the smaller populations in this group of 14 countries. A small population share makes it easier for even a modest raw count to produce a large ratio.

Most Common Crimes in Germany ->

Germany’s population-adjusted ratio of 1.62 ranks only 10th among the same 14 EU countries. The raw count of identified serial killers points to Germany as the most notable case. But the population-adjusted ranking points to Hungary instead.

13 EU Countries Have No Identified Serial Killer Count Due to Strict Documentation Rules

Only 14 of the EU’s 27 member states have at least 10 identified serial killers. That is the report’s threshold for inclusion.

Portugal, Romania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Denmark, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Slovakia, and Slovenia have no identified serial killers listed in the report at all.

This absence from the report doesn’t mean these countries have zero cases. It means no case there has been caught, identified, and reported in English clearly enough to meet the report’s bar.

Larger countries with well-resourced police forces and English-language news coverage are structurally more likely to appear, and to rank higher, in this count.

This documentation bias is strongest outside the EU. It explains why the United States accounts for 62.91% of every serial killer identified worldwide.

The raw count, the population-adjusted ratio, and the list of missing countries are not the same ranking viewed from different angles.

No single one of these numbers tells you which EU country actually has the most identified serial killers. Together, they tell you which countries document and publicize cases best, not which countries produce the most.