Netflix's Monster is many things – a horrifying drama that inspects the darkest corners of our collective psyche, and a provocative entertainment that raises as many moral questions as it answers. But aside from the debates about how much it should show, and whether it celebrates evildoers at the expense of their victims' dignity and privacy, its cultural impact can't be denied.
Season one focused on Jeffrey Dahmer, with Evan Peters playing the blank-faced serial killer. Season two covered the Menendez brothers (played by Nicholas Alexander Chavez and Cooper Koch). The current season sees Newcastle's Charlie Hunnam aged up as Ed Gein, the Wisconsin graverobber and murderer who inspired Psycho, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Silence of the Lambs.
But the big question is: who might showrunner Ryan Murphy and his team address next?
Well, we can answer that: it's Lizzie Borden. It has already been announced that Ella Beatty, daughter of Warren Beatty and Annette Bening, will play the woman accused of murdering her father and stepmother with an axe back in 1892 and kickstarting America's fascination with true-crime sensationalism.
She'll be joined by a returning Hunnam as Lizzie's father Andrew and Rebecca Hall as her stepmother Abby.
But who else might future seasons of Monster cover? And who might play them?
What to Read Next
There's no shortage of case histories in the annals of crime, but not all of them necessarily offer the necessary dramatic throughline. Richard Speck, for example, murdered eight women, but all were on one night, after which he was caught and identified by his prominent forearm tattoo within a couple of days. That wouldn't work over 10 episodes.
The crimes of Ted Bundy, on the other hand, offer such a compelling and disturbing narrative that his story has been told in at least four high-profile films in the past five years – ruling him out – while Aileen Wuornos's story was told brilliantly in Charlize Theron's film about her crimes, which was also called Monster. So that probably rules her out.
Who does that leave? These are our predictions for Monster season five onwards, alongside the actors we think could play them.
Andrei Chikatilo
So far, Monster has limited itself to American criminals. Is it time they looked further afield? Chikatilo was born in Ukraine in 1936 as the country was recovering from the Holodomor, a devastating famine caused by Stalin's agricultural policy. He was told by his parents that his brother had been kidnapped and eaten by starving neighbours.
He became a teacher and married, though he was impotent. Despite being accused of multiple counts of child molestation, Chikatilo wasn't arrested, perhaps because the Soviets did not want to admit that such crimes existed in their would-be Utopia.
He committed dozens of assaults, mutilations and murders of women and children in the '70s and '80s, escaping justice due to forensic incompetence and a lack of political will to admit his existence, though a number of gay men were driven to suicide by heavy-handed interrogators trying to elicit confessions from them.
He was eventually arrested in 1990 and executed by a single gunshot in 1994 after committing 52 known murders.
Who we think should play him: Jason Watkins
Kenneth Bianchi and Angelo Buono Jr
It's very rare, as far as we know, for serial killers to act in tandem. In 1977, Los Angeles police were busy seeking 'The Hillside Strangler', who they believed to be one man.
In reality, Bianchi and Buono were hunting and killing together. The cousins shared an apartment in LA, where the older Buono ran an upholstery business.
In order to make money (and, one presumes, control women), they attempted to become pimps by picking up runaways and forcing them into prostitution. When their first two victims managed to escape their clutches, they started again, this time abandoning any pretence at making money.
The pair pretended to be police officers to coerce young women and children into their vehicle, after which they took them to Bianchi's store, where they raped and strangled them to death before leaving the bodies on nearby hillsides.
After their arrest, Bianchi faked insanity, then later agreed to testify against Buono in return for leniency. He is still in custody. Buono died in 2002 of a heart attack.
Who we think should play them: Miles Teller and Jon Bernthal
Joseph DeAngelo
'The Golden State Killer' committed at least 13 murders and an unknown number of rapes and burglaries (certainly in the hundreds) between 1974 and 1986, yet escaped justice until 2020.
Born into an Air Force family, DeAngelo was abused by his father, according to his sister. He became a police officer, but was sacked after being arrested for shoplifting. His inability to contain his impulses led him to threaten to kill his boss even as he was being fired.
He somehow managed to maintain an outwardly normal family life during the decades spent burglarising, raping and murdering; his daughter claimed he was a "perfect father" and his wife had no reason to question why he was away from home so often.
He would send notes and make phone calls to the police to taunt them, but wasn't caught until police identified a number of suspects whose DNA profile could genetically match the evidence they had in storage. They narrowed their range down to two suspects and used a tissue from DeAngelo's rubbish bin to positively identify him as the killer.
He pleaded guilty in order to avoid the death penalty and is currently in prison serving multiple life sentences.
Who we think should play him: Robert Duvall
Joseph Naso
Also known as the 'Double Initial Killer', Naso was convicted for the rape and murder of four women and girls, though he certainly killed more, possibly as many as 26 between 1974 and 1994.
He got the nickname because several of his victims (Carmen Colon, Pamela Parsons and Charlotte Cook among them) had alliterative names. Some reports claim that Naso was choosing his victims to honour his 'hero', the serial killer Caryl Chessman, though it may have simply been a coincidence.
Something of a drifter, Naso lived around various cities in California and got work as a freelance photographer. He was odd enough to earn the nickname "Crazy Joe" among his acquaintances, and it was later discovered that he took photographs of his victims posed with parts of mannequins.
He was finally charged with murder in 2009 after police investigating him for parole violation discovered a diary and other evidence that tied him to multiple killings. He is currently on death row in California.
Who we think should play him: John Turturro
Dennis Rader
Also known as the 'BTK' killer (short for 'bind, torture, kill'), Rader is remarkable for having conducted a string of rapes and murders while living as an apparently upright and prosperous member of the community, even acting as president of his local church council. He also sometimes spent as long as five years between crimes, suggesting a degree of self-control uncommon in men of his ilk.
Rader – a sadist obsessed with bondage – was a burglar-alarm engineer and later census supervisor who stalked his victims and planned his attacks carefully, even assigning them project titles.
He would taunt the police with letters containing a mix of true and fake information about himself. After sustaining an anonymous correspondence with the Wichita police for some time, Rader asked them if they would be able to trace a floppy disk if he sent it to them. They lied and said they couldn't.
Incredibly, the otherwise meticulous Rader believed them and incriminated himself by sending them a disk which, unknown to him, contained metadata within deleted files that identified him as the sender.
He pleaded guilty in 2005 and remains in solitary confinement.
Who we think should play him: Jason Alexander
The new edition of Living Legends is here! Buy Gaga in newsagents or online, priced at just £8.99.
Editor, Digital Spy Chris has over 25 years' experience as a writer and editor, having worked as a journalist covering TV and movies since the '90s. Starting out as a TV listings editor at the Press Association, he was quickly hired by the nascent Heat magazine, where he rose to become Senior Editor, interviewing the likes of Simon Cowell, Boris Johnson and Paris Hilton. Over the years he has written about entertainment with clarity and wit for Heat, Elle, Q, The Telegraph and of course Digital Spy, and has served many times as a judge in the Royal Television Society awards. He has written and recorded a novelty single with Lord Lloyd-Webber, written scripts for the National TV Awards, made Noel Edmonds cry, accidentally punched an Inbetweener and stolen a small piece of rubble from the Battle of Hogwarts movie set. (They can't have it back.) LinkedIn
