3 infamous serial killers born on Christmas Day
For many, Christmas Day is a time of celebration, where families get together for food, conversation and long-standing traditions. It’s supposed to be joyful — not the start of three grisly serial killer stories that would go on to shock the world.
For the victims of Janie Lou Gibbs, Lao Rongzhi and Aleksandr Rubel, Christmas Day would mark the beginning of the end. Join us here at Crime+Investigation as we examine their crimes in more detail.
1. Janie Lou Gibbs
Janie Lou Gibbs was born in Georgia on 25th December 1932. We don’t know much about her childhood, but she was raised during the Great Depression. Georgia was hit particularly hard, experiencing widespread unemployment and poverty.
However, Gibbs seemed to rise above these challenges. She ran a daycare and was a much-loved member of the church. Her busy professional life didn’t stop her from finding love. She and her husband, Charles, had three sons - Marvin, Melvin and Roger - and later a grandson, baby Ronnie.
The crimes
Gibbs committed her first murder in 1965. After 18 years of marriage, she poisoned Charles with arsenic. While in hospital, Gibbs fed him soup containing more deadly poison. He died on 21st January 1966, and with no reason to suspect foul play, doctors recorded his cause of death as liver disease.
Eight months later, Gibbs turned her attention to her sons. She murdered her youngest, 13-year-old Marvin, on 29th August 1966. Doctors believed he had inherited the same liver disease as his father. On 23rd January 1967, she poisoned 16-year-old Melvin. His cause of death was listed as a rare muscular disorder, and for a third time, Gibbs walked free.
Her downfall came when she murdered her grandson, Ronnie, and a month later, her eldest child, Roger. Suspicious, the authorities carried out autopsies on the five deceased members of the Gibbs family and found dangerous levels of arsenic in their bodies.
Gibbs was sentenced to five life sentences but was released into a nursing home in 1999 due to Parkinson’s disease.
2. Lao Rongzhi
Lao Rongzhi is one of China’s most notorious female serial killers. Together with her boyfriend, Fa Ziying, she committed a string of violent crimes, including kidnapping, extortion and murder.
Nobody could have anticipated Lao’s deadly trajectory when she was born on 25th December 1974. Her mother and father worked hard to support their five children, and she showed promise at school, earning excellent grades and prospects.
The crimes
However, after meeting Fa at a friend’s wedding, everything changed. The two began a violent relationship that quickly became chillingly calculated. Motivated by financial gain, the duo started a string of honey trap schemes, where Lao would pose as a glamorous escort to lure men, and sometimes women, back to an apartment.
There, Fa would ambush them and extort large sums of money from their families. In many cases, the victims were killed to avoid detection. One of their most disturbing crimes involved the strangling of a three-year-old child during an armed robbery.
Fa was arrested in 1999 after a police shootout and was executed by firing squad. However, Lao managed to evade capture for another 20 years, living under a false identity while working in Xiamen. In 2021, she was finally found guilty of murder, kidnapping and robbery and was sentenced to death.
3. Aleksandr Rubel
Aleksandr Andreevich Rubel, born on 25th December 1980, is an unsettling reminder that evil walks among us. The Ukrainian-born Estonian was only 17 years old when he carried out at least seven confirmed murders in the late 1990s, meaning his sentence was capped at eight years - the maximum penalty for a minor. He was released in June 2006 and is believed to be living in Estonia with a new identity.
The crimes
What makes Rubel’s crimes so shocking is their randomness. While authorities noted the teenager abused solvents before the attacks, he didn’t appear to have a clear motive, and his victims didn’t follow a consistent profile.
His first known victim was Tõnu Põld, a disabled neighbour whom Rubel believed wouldn’t fight back. Not long after, Rubel and his father killed Aleksei Pavlov by stabbing him and throwing him from a third-floor window. Over the next several months, in the middle of an insatiable bloodlust, Rubel went on to stab, strangle and decapitate a further five victims, including 15-year-old Alice Siivas in 1998.
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